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

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The Performance of Seaport Clusters
survey results do reflect the expert opinion 52 . Furthermore, due to the fact that all survey
questions were answered during the interviews, so that unclear questions could be
explained, the interpretation differences between the experts are very limited. This makes
the expert opinion more reliable.
The port cluster consists of five components: cargo handling, transport, logistics,
manufacturing and trade (these are discussed later). The experts had to indicate in which
component(s) their organization was active. The background of the experts is given in Table
12.
Table 12: Background of experts
Component Durban Rotterdam LMPC Total three cases
Cargo handling 24 % 27% 32% 27%
Transport 30 % 29% 34% 30%
Logistics 31 % 29% 24% 28%
Manufacturing 11% 9% 4% 9%
Trade 4% 5% 7% 6%
Experts with a background in the cargo handling industry are over represented in the sample
of experts. Experts with a manufacturing background are somewhat underrepresented.
7.5 Survey structure
The survey consists of four sets of questions:
1. Questions to assess the embeddedness and linkages of the respondent’s organization in
the cluster.
52 Most of the sample size logic and ‘statistical significance’ issues are less relevant in this
research, since the survey is not a random sample of a large population of industry experts. We
claim to have surveyed the (vast) majority of cluster experts. Statistical significance tests are
used, but not with the purpose of demonstrating that the expert opinion is ‘representative’.