Explanatory variables driving the technical efficiency of European seaports: An order-α approach dealing with imperfect knowledge

Maritime transport is hugely important for the modern global economy. The increasing development of economic globalization has led to a considerable increase in intercontinental exchanges, stimulating the use of ports and shipping companies with a cheap and quick way to reach most of Europe, Asia, Africa or North America. This study aims to assess the relevance of thirteen exogenous variables, including GDP per capita, water depth, management model, and European directional division, on the performance of the seaports using the nonparametric robust output-oriented order-α model. The study also integrates the Stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis with the order-α model to handle with cases of imperfect knowledge. This problem is not unusual in nonparametric benchmarking exercises and can have very serious effects on performance outcomes. Our findings suggest that none of the thirteen explanatory variables (either external or performance indicator) has a meaningful association with seaports’ technical efficiency. This means that the efficiency of resources usage to deliver port services does not depend on features like localization, management model, local richness, and some performance indicators.