Port Sustainability: A Terminal Comparison Approach

Abstract

As ports are important infrastructure for a countries economy, ports fulfill a vital role in society. In the contemporary global environment, one is expected to adjust its business routines to meet sustainability targets. Because of their significant importance in a port governance framework, terminal operators prove an interesting unit of analysis in the broad concept of port sustainability. This research addresses the notion of port sustainability from the angle of terminal operators' sustainable performance evaluation. The Data Envelopment Analysis technique is employed to benchmark the sustainable performance of various terminal operators active on the global market. Data were obtained from sustainability and CSR issues on behalf of the operators. The conclusions signify that the lack of a cohesive framework for the monitoring and reporting on sustainability measures jeopardize the validity of the results. Even though some interesting patterns can be inferred from the outcomes of the analysis, future research should focus on the retrieval of validated performance statistics and constructing a sustainable performance indication framework for the terminal industry.