Port selection from a hinterland perspective

The studies investigating the port selection process had one thing in common: they analyse the declared preferences of the port agents. However, it is difficult to identify the relevant variables in this process because of the heterogeneity of this group. In this article, we suggest to study the port choice through revealed port selection instead of asking port stakeholders about the main factors in port selection. We propose to analyse the actual inter-port traffic distribution from a holistic view using the hinterland perspective and the discrete choice modelling approach in order to answer the question: Does the location of a port still remain important in port selection? As a case study, we use the Spanish inter-port container distribution among the main peninsular ports.