Seaport Network Efficiency Measurement Using Triangular and Trapezoidal Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analyses with Liner Shipping Connectivity Index Output

Abstract

Seaport network efficiency is very crucial for global maritime economic trades and growth. In this work, data of three years (2018–2020) with input variables (time in port, age of vessels, size of vessels, cargo carrying capacity of vessels) and output variables (Liner Shipping Connectivity Index (LSCI) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP)) are collected. Few screening tests are performed to ensure the data are fit for further analyses. Since none of the existing studies has ever considered LSCI as an output variable, the main purpose of this study is to measure seaport network efficiency based on LSCI using data envelopment analysis (DEA), both classical and fuzzy. In fuzzy DEA, triangular fuzzy number (TrFN) and trapezoidal fuzzy number (TpFN) are used to construct the fuzzy sets of efficiency scores with DEA. The comparison between DEA and triangular fuzzy data envelopment analysis (TrFDEA) shows the range of differences in the results ranges from −0.0274 to 0.0105, while the comparison between DEA and trapezoidal fuzzy data envelopment analysis (TpFDEA) yields the differences within the range of −0.0307 to 0.0106. Using DEA as the relative reference, it is further revealed that the TpFDEA has smaller standard deviations and variances than the TrFDEA in 2018 and 2019, whereas the opposites hold true during the pandemic year of 2020. With the use of fuzzy numbers, the uncertainty levels in the seaport network efficiency measurement can further be investigated as the minimum, mean, median and maximum values are taken into consideration. Moreover, the proposed TrFDEA and TpFDEA lead new insights on the boundedness concept of the efficiency scores, which were never reported before by any researcher, especially in the maritime industry research. Fuzzy regression modelling based on the Possibilistic Linear Regression Least Squares (PLRLS) method was also performed to determine the interval of minimum and maximum connectivity efficiencies, which gave a better estimation than the regular regression model.