Using Dry Ports to Facilitate International Trade in Iran; A Model of Success Factors for Implementation of Dry Ports

Abstract

As coastal production costs in many countries, producers are moving inland to remain competitive with other countries. Also, container transport volumes continue to grow, the sea flow generates almost proportional inland flow; the links with hinterland will become critical factors for the seaports functionality. Development of dry ports is an important part of intermodal transport which play an important role in improving hinterlands. Successful implementation dry port depends on identification and description of required capabilities to develop advanced intermediate terminal, discover existing deficiency in these capabilities and their effects of each other. This article fill the gaps of implementation of dry ports by offering a conceptual model. To do so, this current study is done in a complicated process in five stages of: review of literature, Delphi, Gap analysis, fuzzy Dematel and Structural equation modeling (SEM). 17 indexes of Delphi model were extracted and classified in 8 groups. The identified gap and causal relations enabled presentation of a model which was tested and verified by Partial Least Squares (PLS).