Operational Characteristics and Technical Efficiency of Major Global Container Ports: The Role of Berth Productivity

This study measured the technical efficiency of 20 major global container ports and examined the association between operational characteristics and efficiency. Prior research on the determinants of port efficiency has focused primarily on physical infrastructure and hinterland economic conditions, leaving the operational dimensions of cross-port efficiency differences relatively underexplored. To address this gap, a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA)–Tobit analysis was applied to examine three operational indicators—berth productivity, average container throughput, and average waiting time—measured from vessel-level port-call records. The mean efficiency under the variable-returns-to-scale Banker–Charnes–Cooper (BCC) specification is 0.8881, and 17 ports operate under increasing returns to scale. Berth productivity was positively and significantly associated with efficiency (p < 0.01), and this association remained unchanged under the alternative second-stage estimators and in every leave-one-out re-estimation. The average container throughput and average waiting time carry negative coefficients that reach significance only at the 10% level and are unstable across specifications. These results suggest that berth productivity has a stronger association with technical efficiency than anchorage waiting time. Moreover, under the DEA framework adopted in this study, ports characterized by a turnover-oriented operating pattern tend to exhibit higher technical efficiency than those characterized by a volume-concentrated pattern. By directly incorporating operational performance indicators into the analysis of efficiency differences, this study complements infrastructure-centered approaches and provides operationally grounded implications for port capacity planning and design.