抄録
In the highly competitive shipping industry, flagging out has become one of the important operation strategies for shipowners. Although some literature have discussed the practice of and reasons for vessel flagging out, there is a lack of systematic and quantified analysis, nor any differentiation between different shipping sub-markets. The total fleet of Taiwan’s containerships plays a significant role in the global shipping industry. In order to understand the degree of influence of the related factors upon the vessel registration of Taiwan container shipping companies, this study adopts the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and develops a hierarchical analysis framework with four different objectives, and thirteen relevant criteria to evaluate the issue. Study results indicated that ‘Reducing operating costs’ is the most important among the four objectives, and ‘Trading area restriction’ is the most important evaluation criterion. It is expected that the findings of this work will be helpful for shipping companies and government agencies in making relevant decisions.
