The Performance of Seaport Clusters - RePub - Erasmus Universiteit ...

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The Performance of Port Clusters
Table 36: Distribution of responses with regard to the first proposition of table 34 (on labor) (N=90 84 )
Experts from small firms Experts from large firms Total
Agree 34 (68%) 20 (50%) 54
Disagree 16 (32 %) 20 (50%) 36
Total 50 40 90
The importance of the five agglomeration and disagglomeration forces was surveyed, by
asking the experts to rank all ten ‘cluster structure variables’ from 1 (most important
variable) tot 10 (least important variable). The average rankings of the five
(dis)agglomeration forces are given in Table 37.
Table 37: Importance of five (dis)agglomeration forces
Variable LMPC Rotterdam Durban Total
Customers & suppliers 2.7* 2.0* 2.2* 2.2*
Labor force 4.7 4.1 3.7 4.0**
Knowledge spillovers 4.1 5.1 7.5*** 5.9
Congestion 6.7 6.8 5.1**** 6.1
Land prices & office rents 7.9 5.8 6.6 6.4
Average scores on a scale from 1 (most important) to 10 (least important)
* Significantly more important than other four factors
** Significantly more important than 3 least important factors
*** Significantly less important than in other two ports
**** Significantly more important than in other two ports
On the basis of these results four important conclusions can be drawn. First, the presence of
customers and suppliers is by far the most important agglomeration force in seaports. In all
three cases this variable is ranked as more important than the other variables. This is an
important finding, especially given the fact that ports are widely analyzed as transport nodes.
Cargo moves through seaports when costs are minimized, firms locate in ports primarily
84 This number is lower than in table 34, because some experts did not fill in the number of
employees.