文章基本信息

标题：Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Maritime Connectivity? An Estimation for China and the Polar Silk Road Countries
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作者：Gao Tianming ; Vasilii Erokhin ; Aleksandr Arskiy 等
期刊名称：Sustainability
印刷版ISSN：2071-1050
出版年度：2021
卷号：13
期号：6
页码：3521
DOI：10.3390/su13063521
语种：English
出版社：MDPI, Open Access Journal
摘要：In light of about 80% of international freight traffic carried by sea, maritime supply chains’ stability is pivotal to global connectivity. For over a year now, the transboundary mobility of vessels and cargoes has been restricted by diverse forms of the COVID-19 containment measures applied by national governments, while the lockdowns of people, businesses, and economic activities have significantly affected the growth prospects of various maritime connectivity initiatives. This study investigates how the pandemic-related public health, trade, and market factors have shifted the connectivity patterns in the Polar Silk Road (PSR) transport corridor between China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and four economies of Northern Europe. The causality links between the Shipping Connectivity Index (SCI) and the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, trade volumes with China and the rest of the world, and price indexes of minerals, fuels, food, and agricultural products are revealed separately for eight countries and thirty-five ports. The study algorithm is built on the consecutive application of the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and the Phillips-Perron (PP) stationarity tests, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method, the Fully-Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) and the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) robustness checks, and the Toda-Yamamoto causality test. Tight trade-connectivity links are recorded in all locations along the China-PSR transport corridor in 2015–2019, but in 2020, the relationships weakened. Bidirectional influences between the number of COVID-19 cases and connectivity parameters demonstrate the maritime sector’s sensitivity to safety regulations and bring into focus the role of cargo shipping in the transboundary spread of the virus. The authors’ four-stage approach contributes to the establishment of a methodology framework that may equip stakeholders with insights about potential risks to maritime connectivity in the China-PSR maritime trade in the course of the pandemic.
关键词：China; connectivity; COVID-19 pandemic; maritime trade; Polar Silk Road; shipping