LAUSR

Abstract Decreasing transportation costs due to technological innovations and increasing trade volumes over the last two decades highlighted the importance of seaports in handling merchandise trade moving to and from other ports around the world. Therefore, we investigate the determinants affecting the attractiveness of a port in the United States for the period 2011–2013. To this purpose, we propose a two-stage methodological framework that has the benefit of dealing with the major data requirements and the computationally intensive nature of port choice models. We find evidence that port charges and port congestion are key factors in the decision making process of port users. Evaluating the responsiveness of demand from varying port charges, we find that non-container ports are more negatively affected in the event of an increase of the own port charges. The possibility of substituting one port for another is higher for container ports reflecting that container ship operators often have interests in multiple container terminals along the coastline of the United States.