Applying and Promoting the Seaport Quality System (SQS) and Spatial Interaction Model (SIM) for the Sustainable Development of the Recreational Seaport Industry in Malaysia

The recreational seaport industry carries out many critical functions, including transport circulation, logistics, commercial, and spatial ones. They influence local economic growth and determine the quality of recreational seaport. However, the definition of recreational seaport quality has remained elusive among the community, at present. Hence, this chapter explores the current literature by using the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to derive at the definition of seaport quality based on three categories: seaport effectiveness, seaport reliability, and seaport governance, which will be main pillars for the development of marinas. This chapter proposes the Seaport Quality System (SQS) and Spatial Interaction Model (SIM) as a way to develop approaches and strategies that support sustainable planning and management of recreational seaports and marinas in countries with extensive coastlines. It is proposed that in order to offer sustainable and quality services, marinas must adopt the SQS model based on identifying and managing quality and risks. In addition, SIM can be utilised to improve the marinas operations by adopting key components in cruise activities, economic corridors and seaport regionalisation. The combination of both models are essential to enhance the growth momentum of marinas in this country.

Spatial Interaction Model for Healthcare Accessibility: What Scale Has to Do with It

This manuscript develops a theoretical spatial interaction model using the entropy approach to relax the assumption of the deterministic utility function. The spatial healthcare accessibility improves as the demand for healthcare increases or the opportunity cost of traveling to and from healthcare providers decreases. The empirical application used different spatial econometric techniques and multilevel modeling to evaluate the spatial distribution of existing hospitals in Texas and their social and economic correlates. To control for spatial autocorrelation, spatial autoregressive regression models were estimated, and geographically weighted regression models examined potential spatial non-stationarity. The multilevel modeling controlled for spatial autocorrelation and also allowed local variation and spatial non-stationarity. The empirical analysis showed that healthcare accessibility was not stationary in Texas in 2015, with areas of poor accessibility in rural and peripheral areas in Texas, when using hospitals’ location and county data. The model of spatial interaction applied to healthcare accessibility can be used to evaluate policies aiming at the provision of health services, such as closures of hospitals and capacity increases.