Modelling port/ferry choice in RoRo freight transportation

Maritime transport choice is an often neglected area in the transport literature. This paper makes two contributions to that literature: firstly, it brings together all of the major contributions to date to the port/ferry choice literature (and particularly those of Brooks, D'Este, Matear and Gray, and other authors); secondly, it employs an in-depth, triangulated research methodology which incorporates both quantitative and qualitative methodologies for an investigation of port/ferry choice in the Ireland/UK and Ireland/Continental Europe markets. The qualitative methodology employed, construct elicitation, has not previously been employed in this context. In addition, determinants of choice and the role of other selection variables have been elucidated and two techniques (input-oriented modelling based on the Aaker and Day model and process-oriented modelling) have been employed to model the decision making process.