On the other hand, the dominance of hub-and-spoke operating concept in the international shipping industry has aroused
an increasing interest to justify the existence of cooperation opportunities among ports. According to Heaver (1995), port’s
service networks should complement each other in a meaningful inter-port cooperation. One example is ports that share a
feeder-and-hub port relationship. The carriers collect disparate volume from diverse feeder ports and transship the cargoes
to the hub ports, which provide a location for consolidation and onward transportation to further destinations in large volumes. The linkage formed between the two ports enables both ports to serve an increase volume of traffic from a wider range of origins and destinations. Under such a partnering relationship, the growth in one port helps another to grow. Despite the
importance of justifying the existence of cooperation opportunities within port networks, Haralambides et al. (2002) and
Wang and Cullinane (2006) noted that only minimal consideration has been given in the literature to the degree to which
any individual container port is accessible to the wider maritime container transportation network.