Perceptions of the Relationship between Port Security Level, Resilience, Cargo Operational Performance, and Sustainability Performance among Korean Port Operators and Shipping Companies

Purpose – As globalization progresses, complexity also increases, and various factors that threaten port functions are emerging. Accordingly, the demand for port security to prevent the crisis and resilience that quickly recovers its original function after the crisis is also increasing in port operations. However, few studies have examined how to ensure the port security and how the resilience affects operation performance of port and sustainability performance as well. So the study aims to find out how port security affects port resilience and port operational performance, and consequently, this two factors affect socioeconomic and environmental sustainability performance respectively and synthetically. Design/methodology – Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was first performed to determine the validity of the factors of model and hypothesis test was performed using Structural Equation Model (SEM) to analyze the Port Performance Model, which show the perception logic among port security level, port resilience, operation performance, and sustainability performance. In order to empirically analyze this model, total 264 respondents from port security operators, shipping companies in South Korea were surveyed. Findings – As result of SEM, First, port security level positively affected the resilience (H1) and cargo operational performance (H2) but not in both of the sustainability performances (H3, H4). Second, resilience positively affected only cargo operational performance (H5) and socio-economic sustainability performance (H7). Last, cargo operation performance positively affects the both of sustainability performances (H8, H9). Originality/value – It was confirmed that port security could improve cargo operational performance through ensuring port resilience and eventually increase the socio-economic sustainability. Therefore the study implies that careful integration and management of port security, port resilience, and sustainability are required, along with compromise on sustainable development goals in the social, economic, and environmental area among all stakeholders.