Dry ports: research outcomes, trends, and future implications

The concept of dry ports has gained significant interest among practitioners and researchers in the last decade. Consequently, publications on this topic have followed this development, and today there are more than 100 papers available in the Scopus and Science Direct databases, compared with only two papers in 2007. The purpose of this paper is to summarize current scientific knowledge on the phenomenon and to identify research outcomes, trends, and future research implications by conducting a systematic literature review (SLR). SLR is an explicit and reproducible method that ensures the reliability and traceability of the results. The selection of relevant papers was performed independently by each author using Rayyan QCRI software; the coding and analysis were conducted with the help of NVivo qualitative data analysis software. Findings show that the research area is largely represented by qualitative cases and optimization studies covering various aspects of dry ports. Dry port examples around the world differ based on location, functions, services, ownership, and maturity level. Although the research area is young and discrete, five main thematic areas are identified: debate on the concept, environmental impact, economic impact, performance impact, and dry ports from a network perspective.