Towards a research into island and mainland seaport location patterns by means of factor analysis

Summary

The island industrialization is proposed as a partial alternative to the widely requested expansion of port industrialization. A location analysis of mainland versus island sites therefore becomes necessary both from an industrial and regional policy viewpoint.

It will be of great help to have the instruments to bring a certain reorganisation of industrial space to a good end. It is our belief that factor analysis may be of a limited, but nevertheless relevant, use in this connection, especially seen the practically unavailability of good quantitative information as to location decisive motives.

Given a definite set of evaluated location aspects, F.A. results in location factor structures as a function of time, sector and space. The main purpose of our research is therefore to find whether relevantlocalisation patterns may be found as a function of estimated factor structures. One and another has been studied in view of the establishment of basic industries either in a mainland seaport or on an artificial island. The following question of “how” to stimulate such an industrial policy, i.e. the question of detection of right combinations of location factors, is of extreme importance.

F.A. too might be of sensible use in this connection by inverting the problem, i.e. by estimating “factor scores”.

In this way it followed that location aspects in connection with “wages”, “taxes” and “energy” should be of a paramount importance in view of an island industrialization, whereas all other general location factors, like especially those in connection with transport services as well as costs, apparently are only of importance in combination with other aspects. The resulting location patterns are substantially different sector by sector mainly as a function of “spatial” circumstances, and might therefore become indicative instruments in the frame work of regional industrial planning.