Evaluating the economic and environmental efficiency of ports: Evidence from Italy

Environmental Disclosure: Study on Efficiency and Alignment with Environmental Priorities of Spanish Ports

“…Nonetheless, there is an important paradox, because even though the relevance of environmental management of ports is recognized (Bermúdez et al, 2019;Taliani et al, 2017) , the pressure to ensure competitiveness and globalization (Hervás-Peralta et al, 2020) represents a managerial stress. That is to say, there is the need to prioritize the environment as opposed to maintaining economic efficiency (Castellano et al, 2020;Dong et al, 2019) .…”

“…Given this scenario, the European Sea Ports Organization (ESPO) emphasizes the importance of controlling and monitoring green practices (Castellano et al, 2020). In particular, it identifies annually, through the EcoPort (EP) initiative, environmental priorities for European ports with the intention of encouraging environmental management practices.…”

“…What is known so far is that the sustainable port environment becomes viable with the active involvement of stakeholders and port operators through the implementation of key sustainable indicators (Eswari & Yogeswari, 2019). Studies have shown that economic efficiency achieves the ideal target when ports have a high pro-environmental attitude, implementing proactive green policies (Castellano et al, 2020). It is also recognized the importance of knowing about external pressures on issues related to environmental management (Bermúdez et al, 2019ª;Kuznetsov et al, 2015) and economic efficiency (Dong et al, 2019;Castellano et al, 2020;Taliani et al, 2017).…”

“…In addition, maritime trade has changed with more and modern ports, which also increases aspects of competitiveness (Taliani et al, 2017). Sustainability in port systems can be challenging and complex (Eswari & Yogeswari, 2019), as it integrates organizational aspects and the zone of influence of the port related to the environment, such as the preservation of the coast, morphology and marine biodiversity (Castellano et al, 2020), in addition to economic aspects that allow maintaining competitiveness at the global level (Taliani et al, 2017). To support managers and society achieve sustainable development, aspects of environmental management and environmental indicators have helped identify, control and monitor environmental aspects and impacts (Rosa et al, 2019).…”

“…Recent studies have investigated this complex factor through efficiency analysis instruments, such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results of these studies are that the integration between economic efficiency and environmental performance of ports is important to improve economic value and to sustain the competitiveness of Port, having the environmental performance as the central point (Castellano et al, 2020;Gobbi et al, 2019;Dong et al, 2019;Taliani et al, 2017). The empirical results of these studies reveal that the DEA was used to analyze the efficiency of the ports and verify a positive relationship between environmental sustainability and economic performance.…”