However SSR does not have higher points per night and I believe it has the largest amount of points yet it's dues are 4th lowest at WDW.
Yes operating expenses matter.
Yes Number of Points at the resort matter.
IMO Point Charts do not matter when it comes to setting dues.
I believe
@Unclelude was close but it should be
Dues = Operating Costs ÷ Number of Points at the resort matter.
Many will say I'm wrong but that is the way I see it so I apologize in advance.
You're missing a variable, which is total number of rooms.
In a clean hypothetical, we have a resort with 1,000 identical rooms (all studios for simplicity). If each room rents for 10 points per night, you'd need to sell 3,650,000 points (10x1,000x365). If we increase the per-night rate to 15 points, then you'd need to sell 5,475,000 points. If the operating costs stay the same, then that cost, distributed over 5.5 million points will result in lower dues per point than if that cost were spread out over 3.6 million points. There's no way around that.
SSR may not have higher points per night, but it has more rooms. WAY more rooms. Going back to our scenario, if we substitute 1,500 rooms for our model's 1,000, then all of a sudden, our hypothetical resort has 8,212,500 points to sell (15x1,500x365). Now, certainly with a bigger resort, operating costs can and will be much higher (with SSR transportation is an obvious line item), but you now has 50% more points to spread out your costs across, and as long as costs aren't 50% greater, you'll still low points per night and low(er) dues.
In real world numbers (getting away from our very rounded hypothetical), SSR is massive at 1,320 rooms. That's nearly 6 times bigger than CCV, 5 times bigger than BCV, 3 times bigger than PVB and BLT, double the size of AKV, and a whopping 9 times bigger than VGF (pre-Old Pine Key). Its closest comparison would be OKW, and even then it's still over 40% bigger. There (OKW), the dues are almost $1.75 more per point, even though the point chart is similarly low and the grounds equally large. The difference: many more rooms meaning many more points to distribute costs across.
Also, if you look at the three resorts with lower dues (BLT, CCV, and GFV) two of those resorts are the towers, and the third is sharing resort costs with the remaining 600 rooms at GFH (and a much smaller footprint).