Construction of evaluation index system for collaborative layout of port clusters and practical exploration of Shenzhen Port

Different from the traditional collaborative evaluation model of port clusters with cities as the basic unit, a technical method was proposed for collaborative evaluation of port clusters with port areas instead of cities as the basic unit based on the actual organizational characteristics of port shipping supply chains. Specifically, the evaluation was conducted from two dimensions: collaboration among different port areas in cities and collaboration among different ports in regions. To effectively evaluate the issues in the collaborative layout of coastal cities within port clusters and accurately determine the level of internal and external collaborative development of ports, the "combined weighting-nonlinear gain" method was employed to construct a collaborative evaluation model based on the system collaboration theory. Taking Shenzhen Port as an example, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to invite expert scoring to construct a judgment matrix and determine the subjective weights. Based on the entropy weight method, the information entropy was calculated with the panel data of Shenzhen Port from 2018 to 2024 to determine the objective weights. The subjective and objective weights were integrated using the weight coefficient. A collaborative gain term was innovatively introduced. The main core indicators from the evaluation index system of city-level and regional-level port clusters were selected to construct a nonlinear evaluation model to quantify the internal and external collaborative effects of port cities. The empirical results show that in 2024, Shenzhen Port has achieved a collaboration score of 0.831 8 within the city-level port cluster, indicating an overall excellent collaborative state. However, there are significant differences among the five indicators. The information collaboration (0.90) is the best, while ecological and environmental collaboration (0.50) is the worst, followed by operational management collaboration (0.75), institutional collaboration (0.73) and infrastructure collaboration (0.71). Therefore, the port areas within Shenzhen Port should focus on strengthening energy sharing and infrastructure construction. In the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area port cluster, Shenzhen Port gains a collaboration score of 0.682 8, indicating a primary collaborative state. There is still considerable room for improvement in Shenzhen Port's collaborative layout within the regional port cluster. Among the six indicators, information collaboration (0.76) is relatively the best, operational management collaboration (0.66) reaches a primary level, while infrastructure collaboration (0.57), economic benefit collaboration (0.48), institutional collaboration (0.42) and ecological and environmental collaboration (0.35) show serious imbalances. Shenzhen Port should implement a system and ecology-driven strategy. Internally, based on an improved collaborative layout of infrastructure, the establishment of a port alliance revenue distribution mechanism should be prioritized to accelerate the construction of an LNG bunkering network and improve the core weaknesses within a certain period, effectively enhancing energy utilization efficiency. Externally, the collaborative safeguard policies for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area port cluster should be further studied.