Research trend of dry port studies: a two-decade systematic review

Over the years, dry port studies experience a growing interest from academics and researchers focusing on various contexts within a seaport studies and involving a range of methods for evaluation and adoption. Some scholars have attempted to evaluate research in dry port during the past decade, but research involving structured analysis and extensive available literature are still very limited. Bibliometric analysis was conducted to generate 470 articles, and qualitative analysis was performed to produce 268 papers focusing on dry port studies from 1999 to 2019. The result categorize dry port studies into six thematic areas including (1) port policy and governance, (2) port management & strategies, (3) competition & performance, (4) planning & development, (5) dry port operation, and (6) spatial analysis. The finding of this study reveals that scholars are interested in competition, port performance, and dry port planning and development. On the other hand, the themes related to spatial analysis and dry port operation are found to remain limited. Moreover, sustainability issue has emerged as one of the potential topics that might highly contribute to the direction of future dry port studies.