Liner shipping network - transaction mechanism joint design model considering carbon tax and liner alliance

Abstract As a typical system to reduce costs and improve efficiency, the liner shipping system has an important role in economic globalization. In recent years, with the government’s strengthening of carbon emission control and the popularity of liner alliances, the decision-making problems faced by liner companies have become more complicated. Motivated by this setting, this paper investigates a liner shipping network - transaction mechanism joint design problem (LSTD). The government’s levy of carbon taxes on liner companies and liner alliance cooperation strategies are considered. To solve the abovementioned problem, a biobjective optimization model is established. The model takes the total profit of the alliance and the fairness of the distribution of alliance profit as two objectives and optimizes the alliance liner shipping network design scheme (i.e., composition of the fleet, calling sequence of the ports on the routes, and sailing speed of ships) and the alliance transaction mechanism (i.e., slot transaction price among members). To solve the model, the biobjectives are set with different priorities to transform the model into a two-stage model. A genetic algorithm is designed and embedded into the inverse optimization model. Numerical experiments are performed based on China’s actual import/export transportation data. Two sensitivity analyses for different freight rates and carbon tax rates are conducted. The experimental results show that the proposed model and algorithm can effectively solve the LSTD and provide necessary decision support for the operation of the liner alliance.