Port choice behaviour--from the perspective of the shipper

A good or bad points of ports service system may affect the user's port choice behaviour, or even influence the cost of the whole fleet or shipper, so port choice is an important part of port transportation demand behaviour. There are three regions from north, centre to south in the west coast of Taiwan. There are three international container ports (northern, central and southern) on the west coast of Taiwan, with 229 kilometres between the northern and southern ones. This paper focuses one aspect of shippers' port choice behaviour. Through the collection and analysis of data and setting up the model, one knows the preference of shippers' choice. In the past, the method of research on port choice behaviour can be divided into four types, namely descriptive statistics analysis, multi-objective decision analysis, multi-variate analysis and multiple choice analysis. Each method has its characteristics and restriction to make the analysis research differently. This paper first describes the methodology and brings the result of port choice. Using the revealed preference multinomial logical model, the writer proceeds to the analysis of shippers' choice behaviour. In the analysis model, not only the basic choice model was set up, but also the experienced and competitive port choice models were derived. So, it will be easier to understand the affection of the past and present time experience on port choice. It will also know whether the differences of routes, frequencies and port service will make a competition.