The Evaluation of Soft Power Investment Effect on Shanghai Port Competitiveness Using DEA method

Abstract

With the economy development, the competition among ports becomes increasingly intense. In order to improve the overall competitiveness of Shanghai, this paper proposes a systematic evaluation model for the competitiveness of Shanghai Port with 25 input indicators (e.g. port infrastructure and port soft power) and 6 output indicators (e.g. Port service level and port development potential). The proposed evaluation model reduces the dimensions of the indices by Factor Analysis, and uses the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to validate the analysis of Shanghai Port from 2008 to 2013. By implementing the cross-evaluation mechanism after analyzing the factor deviation, this paper is capable to recognize the pros and cons of each decision-making unit (DMU), and point out the improvement direction for each DMU, so as to enhance the competitiveness of Shanghai Port.