关键词: 中欧国际多式联运, 多准则决策, “一带一路”, 中欧班列, 贝叶斯最优最劣法

Abstract: In the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, traditional maritime transportation, China Railway Express (CR Express) and inland transportation services, together constitute the China-Europe international multimodal transportation network, providing customers with more diversified transportation routes and service options. However, it should be emphasized that there is still a serious structural contradiction between the development demands of Chinese foreign trade and the capacity of international freight transportation corridors. On the one hand, although CR Express offers faster delivery times for Chinese customers, due to its high transportation costs and the withdrawal of the subsidy mechanism, most customers continue to prefer the maritime option with higher volumes and lower freight rates. On the other hand, the blockage of the Suez Canal, the Red Sea crisis and the frequent piracy risks have highlighted the shortcomings of traditional maritime transportation in terms of transportation safety and reliability, which can’t effectively guarantee the long-term stability of China-Europe trade transportation. Therefore, how to effectively assess the competitive relationship between CR Express and traditional sea transportation is an urgent research problem. This is crucial for the selection and adjustment of the customer’s transportation scheme, and is the key involving the customer’s ability to maintain profitability and competitiveness in the fast-developing and fiercely competitive market.
China-Europe multimodal transportation involves a wide range of logistics services and cargo types, and is a chain multimodal transportation problem from source to destination. It is not only the economic or time utility of each transport chain that affects the decision-making behavior of customers, but also the comprehensive transport utility of the entire transport chain under multimodal transport services. Based on this, this article regards the international multimodal transportation routing between China and Europe as a multi-criteria decision-making problem involving several conflicting decision criteria, and constructs a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making framework. The framework first establishes a route criteria utility function that considers transportation cost, transportation time, reliability, safety, convenience and environmental impact. Then, a Bayesian Best Worst Method (BBWM) is applied to determine customer preferences for the decision criteria. Finally, Measurement of Alternatives and Ranking according to Compromise Solution (MARCOS) is utilized to rank the multimodal routes. This enables a comprehensive assessment of the competitive relationship in China-Europe international multimodal transport in heterogeneous regions and heterogeneous customer markets, and provides decision-making references for the international multimodal transport organization optimization, logistics corridor construction and industrial layout planning of the China-Europe trade.
The results of the research find that in descending order of customer’s concern for decision-making criteria when choosing transportation services are transportation cost, transportation reliability, transportation time, transportation safety, transportation convenience and environmental impact. The choice of the optimal transport service is strongly related to geographical factors, with China-Europe maritime transport being more competitive in coastal and sub-coastal regions close to ports. The further western and deep land region is more inclined to choose CR Express service, the advantageous service areas of China-European maritime transportation and CR Express account for 64.5 percent and 35.5 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, most customers tend to choose more convenient CR Express departure stations or sea departure ports, breaking the principle of “geospatial proximity”. CR Express is absolutely attractive for high-value time-sensitive products such as electronics and medical devices, and has a competitive advantage in the transportation market for low-value time-sensitive products such as clothing and apparel. In contrast, China-Europe maritime transport is absolutely attractive to customers with low-value time-insensitive products such as ore fuels and competitively attractive to customers with high-value time-insensitive products such as machinery and transportation equipment. The sensitivity analysis shows that transportation time, cost and reliability attributes are the key factors affecting the competition between CR Express and China-Europe maritime transport, and the reliability test results also prove the robustness of the model proposed in this paper. Finally, this paper provides targeted policy recommendations for a range of stakeholders, including logistics operators, government departments and China-Europe customers.

Key words: China-Europe international multimodal transport, multiple criteria decision-making, the Belt and Road Initiative, China Railway Express, Bayesian best-worst method