A systematic literature review on port competitiveness

The continuous investment and expansion of ports has introduced new requirements for the sustainable development of seaports. Port competitiveness is an increasingly relevant subject due to the value that ports create for enterprises in the maritime supply chain. As the functions and requirements of ports evolve, this article aims to present an up-to-date review of the research trends and future directions of port competitiveness. A systematic literature review was performed to comprehensively gather and review 81 journal papers on port competitiveness published in the past two decades. The result shows a hierarchy of the top ten port competitiveness drivers based on their research frequency in the literature, categorised into four aspects. The frequency ranking of port competitiveness strategy is further summarised based on the reviewed papers. This paper also provides a critical analysis of port competitiveness mechanism in order to identify research trends, gaps, and future research directions.