ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1661382
This article is part of the Research TopicSmartization and Resilience of Ports and ShippingView all articles
Port green investment strategy under government subsidization and regulation policy
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanghai Polytechnic University, Shanghai, China
- 2Wuhan University Renmin Hospital, Wuhan, China
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The greener port has become an important goal for the maritime industry. This paper developed an economic model to discuss how the investment effectiveness and two commonly used governmental policies (regulation and subsidy policies) affect port's output, green investment, and governmental policy choices. Findings show that compared to no policy, both policies promote green investment, but their impacts on output are opposite: regulation restrains output, while subsidies boost it. Subsidies, as a proactive tool, reduce ports' green investment costs, driving both investment and output-especially in initial stages with high subsidy rates (0.3-0.5) covering over 50% of costs. Regulation, more passive, forces ports to increase investment but limit production, particularly when investment efficiency is low. Investment effectiveness shapes policy selection: subsidies work better at low or high efficiency, while regulation is preferable at medium efficiency. Both policies outperform no intervention in improving social welfare. These insights inform policy design for sustainable port development.
Keywords: Port green investment, regulation, Subsidy, investment effectiveness；, green policy
Received: 07 Jul 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xie and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhongyin Zhou, Wuhan University Renmin Hospital, Wuhan, China
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