Subsidy strategy serves as one of the critical instruments for regional governments to promote transportation structure adjustment. Though uniform subsidy standards are applied by port cities to container railway transportation in short-distance hinterlands, they fail to implement differentiated subsidies tailored to the unique characteristics of each hinterland. Therefore, a multi-channel coordinated subsidy model based on a discrete choice model is constructed. The model enables the reallocation of subsidy funds across multiple port hinterlands to minimize the turnover volume of road transportation chains, and it is applied to 9 representative export container hinterlands of Qingdao Port. The results demonstrate that under a single subsidy source of government, compared to a non-subsidy scenario, standalone and coordinated subsidy strategies reduce the turnover volume of road transportation chain by 16.87% and 17.91%, respectively. Under multi-subsidy sources of government and railway, compared to the non-subsidy scenario, standalone and coordinated subsidy strategies reduce the turnover volume of road transportation chain by 25.18% and 26.36%, respectively. The subsidy strategies play positive role in transportation structure adjustment, and the coordinated subsidy strategies show obvious optimization effects on container modal shift from road to rail. From the perspective of improving efficiency by reducing road transport chain turnover volume, subsidies should be preferentially allocated to hinterlands with longer transport distances and a solid foundation in railway transport chain volume.
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