Investigating the efficiency of container terminals through a network DEA cross efficiency approach

In the quest to combat climate change and facilitate sustainable development, improving efficiency is a common and successful method for container terminals. Under such a circumstance, it is critical to accurately estimate the efficiency level of container terminals, so that making more reasonable decision-making. However, many present studies consider container terminal operations as a “black box”, reliance mostly on their own self-efficiency evaluations, ignoring some important external environmental factors, which can lead to inaccurate results that are hard to compare. To rectify this situation, this paper proposes a new network DEA cross-efficiency model that considers initial structure and GHG emissions of container terminal, co-opetition (competition and cooperation) and “peer-evaluation” between container terminals, which enables us to attain more accurate and comparable evaluations. Having applied this model to 25 Chinese container terminals in 2019 to analyze their three efficiencies (production operation, profit transformation, and all-in). Then, the effects of different factors on three efficiencies are analyzed by Tobit regression, and a series of efficiency improvement recommendations are proposed. Our findings revealed that while the production operation at these terminals was efficient (with average performance rate of 0.65), both profit transformation and overall efficiency were quite inefficient (averaging 0.23 and 0.35 respectively). Factors such as price for services, quality of services, technology used, and regional economic development level have significant positive effects on overall efficiency. Investment size had a significant negative effect on overall efficiency. Through our research, we have provided vital support for accurately evaluating efficiency in container terminals as well as useful guidance when designing strategies for greater efficiency improvement.