Collaborative Governance Mechanisms for Multimodal Freight Hubs in Double Landlocked Countries: Evidence from Uzbekistan

As a double landlocked country, Uzbekistan has long faced development bottlenecks of high transit logistics costs and low turnover efficiency. Based on the study of eight core multimodal freight hubs in Uzbekistan, this paper adopts a combination of DEA efficiency evaluation and panel regression analysis to systematically analyze the core influencing factors of hub operation efficiency. The study finds that the improvement effect of collaborative governance mechanisms on hub efficiency is significantly better than that of infrastructure expansion alone. Three types of governance measures, namely pre-clearance authorization, integrated management, and information platform, can jointly drive an efficiency increase of 35%, while the effect of infrastructure expansion is only 3%. The study also finds that the customs clearance time for double transit is 2.57 times that of single transit, showing a significant nonlinear superposition characteristic. The conclusions of this study can provide practical and implementable references for the hub construction and operation optimization of the China-Central Asia Corridor under the Belt and Road Initiative.