International regulations and sustainable development in touristic European port’s efficiency after the pandemic

Abstract

The port’s adoption of environmental criteria and the incorporation of sustainable activities involves numerous challenging issues, such as limiting emissions caused by current and upcoming port operations. One of the three dimensions of sustainability that have been specified by Souza and Alves (2018) is environmental sustainability. On the other hand, the public authorities and the wider community have put strong pressure on ports to fulfil their social responsibility (De Grosbois, 2016). The current study aims to promote the linkage of the largest European port’s efficiency with environmental regulations and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL). Previous studies have examined the effect of basic individual environmental factors on the port’s effectiveness. The innovation of the study focuses on the relation of MARPOL regulations to the port’s efficiency as well as several environmental guidelines and sustainable development goals after the pandemic. It is the first study that incorporates efficiency variables with climatology programs, safe and healthy environmental variables, global reporting initiatives, and MARPOL Annexes. The basis of the data is the top twenty ports obtained from Eurostat and processed using multiple regression analysis.