Evolution of Italy-Greece Passenger Maritime Transport: a Multi-level Study to Estimate the Factors Influencing the Demand and Supply of Passenger Ferry Transport

In recent years, the shipping and maritime transport segment has undergone profound changes. Faced with the need to achieve the sustainability goals set by Agenda 2030, different sustainable modes of transport must therefore be evaluated. Passenger transport by ship has proven to be the least polluting per pax/km. Different European regulations are moving in the direction of limiting transport by air when there are fewer polluting methods on average lengths, mainly on a national scale. The tourism sector is one where the impacts on the Agenda 2030 goals are often not properly assessed. Ship connections with a tourism function are central in connections to smaller islands which, due to their size and relatively small flows, do not have airports. In medium-sized basins, tourist traffic by ship is changeable and often dependent on specific characteristics of the basin. The aim of the present research work is to analyse the general case of an open basin, with an application to the Adriatic-Ionian basin. The system of connections between eastern Italy and western Greece by ship is analysed. The case study refers to the characteristics of travel from Italy to Greece by ship, with reference to the Ionian Islands. The overall method proposed is articulated in several successive steps, which can be summarised as follows: analysis of the characteristics of services; analysis of supply with network analysis methods applied to services; analysis of demand with estimation of a regression model. The methodologies identified make it possible to highlight the temporal and central characteristics of the network considered, and at the same time to verify the influence that certain attributes have on tourism for the area studied. The results show, on the one hand, that not all services have a significant summer component and, on the other, that the centrality of the various ports within the network changes, even heavily, with the season. The work is expected to be of particular interest to policy makers, planners, and researchers, considering centrality as closely linked to the distribution of services for passengers in ports and related port-city areas, and considering the possibility of better planning the distribution of funding in relation to the ports’ development and resilience to address disruptive events.