Port governance in the post COVID-19 pandemic era: Heterogeneous service and collusive incentive

Abstract In the post COVID-19 pandemic era, collusion strategy has been attempted to confront fierce market competition in container shipping supply chains. Three typical collusion scenarios are constructed as follows: i) none of the two pairs of shipping chains colludes; ii) both pairs collude; and iii) only one pair colludes. This paper developed a two-stage game model to study the optimal strategies of the container terminals and corresponding liner companies. The container ports set terminal handling charge (THC) to pursue