SNA Approach for Analyzing the Research Trend of International Port Competition

Although port competition is changing continually in various environments, no research trend analyses of port competition have been carried out. Instead, prior studies have focused on ports gaining a competitive advantage or the development strategies of ports, this study analyses the research trends in port competition using a Social Network Analysis (SNA). We build the network using keywords from existing academic papers on port competition. By visualizing divisions by generation, studies in the first period (1980-1999) focused mainly on keywords such as “port competition” and “competitiveness.” Then, in the second period (2000-2007), the trends shifted to include “port competition” “China” “container port” and “Hong Kong” which became central in the network. The most drastic change occurred in the third period (2008-2015), where, in addition to “port competition,” the central point of the network also included “cooperation” and “supply chain”. The results of the analysis using the high central value of SNA method indicate that the focus of research on port competition ranges from one dedicated region to globalization. This can help researchers understand the research trend of port competition from an academic viewpoint.