Insights into regional and industry-specific air freight demand structures in Germany

Abstract

Air freight transport plays a vital role in Germany’s foreign trade and contributes to Germany’s position as one of the leading exporting countries worldwide. Therefore, the paper aims to provide new insights into the air freight demand structures in Germany and its interdependencies with the economic activities on a regional level. Applying the concept of the derived transport demand and taking into consideration international trade theories, the paper starts with an analysis of the air freight affinity and demand of different branches of trade within Germany’s manufacturing sector. Building on these findings, the regional distribution of air freight demand in Germany is investigated. At first, concentration trends of the spatially differentiated air freight demand on the regional level of the Federal States in Germany are analysed. In a next research step, the paper aims to identify and evaluate the factors determining the regional distribution of the industry-specific air freight demand. Multiple regression models have been applied to analyse the generation of air freight demand on a disaggregated regional level (the sixteen Federal States in Germany) for fourteen different branches of manufacturing.