Toward Business-to-Business Sharing Economy: Drivers of and Barriers to Sharing Resources of Container Terminals

Port congestion concerns highlight the resource strain on terminal operations. Because investing in new resources is costly, using existing resources more efficiently through business to-business sharing has emerged as a superior alternative. Although the high standardization in container logistics renders terminal operations favorable for sharing, other complexities impede this process. Prior research emphasizes the benefits of sharing while neglecting the critical first step: initiating the implementation. Moreover, existing studies typically treat all forms of resource sharing uniformly. This three-round Delphi study examines the drivers and barriers to resource sharing in container terminals using 31 expert responses from distinguished maritime academics and professionals from prominent companies in port operations. Item extraction was verified twice; consensus required ≥ 60% agreement and an interquartile range (IQR) ≤ 1, with sensitivity analyses (higher thresholds and subgroup splits) confirming the stability of top drivers and barriers. Our findings indicate the significance of joint planning (among terminals with different operators at the same port), operational compatibility, and stakeholder involvement. They further reveal that the drivers and barriers differ for capacity resources (i.e., immovable assets) versus physical resources (i.e., movable assets), making this study the first to distinguish them. In addition, we address the theoretical neglect of stakeholder involvement in resource sharing. Based on the rankings of drivers and barriers, we provide engineering managers and policymakers with a roadmap for the successful implementation of cross-terminal resource sharing.