Promoting Sustainability through Assessment and Measurement of Port Externalities: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Paths

Abstract

In an attempt to mitigate and balance economic, environmental, and societal externalities that ports exert, port sustainability is becoming increasingly important as a key priority. This work embarks on an effort to explore the boundaries, provide a holistic view, and establish a knowledge map of contemporary research in the field of port externalities and impacts, by conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) by carrying out a three-stage procedure (planning, execution, and reporting), enhancing objectivity, while limiting errors and bias. The literature under study pertains to research domains focusing on: (a) identifying port externalities and impacts, (b) utilizing metrics and indicators to measure and quantify the positive or negative impact of port externalities, and (c) promoting an inclusive framework for sustainable port development. Our results include, among others, the classification of methodologies and particularly, of indicators established per type of externality to measure and monitor sustainable port performance, as well as identification of trends and gaps within the contemporary literature. We find considerable room for exploring new concepts and research paths within the domain of port impacts and externalities, both within individual dimensions of sustainability (economic, social, environmental), and on a multidisciplinary level.

Advancing port sustainability: Essentials for a model concession agreement framework

“…• adequate methods to assess sustainability in ports based on different indicators Housni et al, 2021;Styliadis et al, 2021) or even suggesting a composite index based on a set of relevant indictors (Laxe et al, 2017;PORTOPIA, 2018).…”

Defining a Social Role for Ports: Managers’ Perspectives on Whats and Whys

“…Participants also referred to social roles the organisation need to adapt to provide social benefits as part of their core activities (SR.2) and maximise the port's economic capabilities to provide social betterment (SR.5). The reference to adapt the port in the results is something referred in the literature as a pathway to lead the ports to the necessary changes in sustainability management, investing more emphasis on the social dimension of businesses [5,99]. As referred by Interviewee_16, "Ports can hire professionals that can offer a different understanding of the social dimension.…”