Abstract
Abstract
Seaports are one of the life bloods of sustainable economic development in Indonesia. Currently, there are still many challenges and obstacles that have not been fully overcome at seaports outside of Java, Indonesia. Many studies have been conducted in an effort to reduce logistics costs, but there is a need for more in-depth studies related to increasing port productivity and its impact on regional economic growth. This study aims to empirically examine the driving factors of Port Productivity (PP), Port Competitiveness (PC), and Regional Economic Growth (REG). The largest archipelagic country, Indonesia, still has few competitive ports, still lacks facilities, logistics costs are still high, and still has a limited digital operating system. This research method was carried out using a quantitative and qualitative approach (mixed method) using questionnaires and direct interviews with port experts. The population in this study was 240 people selected by purposive sampling from stakeholders at 16 seaports in Indonesia. Data was also collected from various valid sources in well-known books and journals. Port factors were used after strict selection. Respondent data were analyzed with Smart PLS. The results of the study found 10 factors that significantly influence seaports, as evidenced by the t-statistic value >1.96 and p-value <0.05 of the 10 factors, 5 of them have a very significant influence, namely; QCP→PC, HRD→PP, GP→PC, PTT→REG, GP→REG with sequential t-statistic values of; 33,694, 19,784, 14,222, 6,515, 5,452 respectively, and a p-value of 0.000. This finding confirms that REG is closely related to the performance of PTT, Berth area Facilities (BAF), gateway performance (GP), port digitalization system (DOS), policies and regulations (PR), port competitiveness (PC) of a region. While PC is influenced by QCP and port GP performance. In addition, this study also found that PP is closely related to HRD and the performance of yard management (YM). The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the development of economic growth zones in archipelagic nations.