Effective port-city interactions have become a critical focus for promoting the continued development of port cities. To address this issue, this study adopts a value-added perspective to examine these interactions, overcoming traditional port throughput metric limitations in capturing the actual economic contribution of the port. Using a system dynamics approach to analyze Huai’an Port, an inland river hub port, the main results are as follows. First, the growth of the tertiary industry enhances inter-regional freight transport, moderately increases port throughput, and boosts port value-added. Second, increasing the share of waterway cargo freight volume significantly boosts cargo throughput and contributes to a certain degree of growth in port value-added, thereby supporting urban economic development. Third, while increased investment in water transport improves port capacity and throughput, its contribution to port value-added remains limited. Finally, among port-related industries, an increase in employment in the port derivative service industry has the most substantial impact on enhancing port value-added. These results highlight the necessity to prioritize industrial transformation and upgrading, enhance the planning and development of the inland river network, optimize port resource utilization, and improve inland river shipping services. • A system dynamics approach is used to analyze inland river port-city interactive development. • A value-added perspective is adopted to better capture the actual economic contribution of the port. • Various policy scenarios are simulated to quantify the changes in port value-added. • It creates implications for policy makers to promote the continued development of port cities.
Huang et al. (2026) studied this question.