Service quality assessment of public transport and the implication role of demographic characteristics
Publication date
2015-12ISSN
1613-7159
Abstract
This paper first proposes scales to evaluate customers’ perceived service quality in public transport then identify the demographic characteristics factors that may influence customer perceived service quality and as well as to identify any customers’ perceptions differences between the subcategories.
Design/methodology/approach
Manager interview and random sampling method were used to survey 288 consumers of buses public transport. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to confirm the scale validity. Thereafter, Structural Equation Modeling, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to asses the causal paths and the service quality perceptions differences among the subgroups.
Findings
The three dimensions of functional, convenience and physical environment quality were confirmed as underlying factors to assess customer perceived quality in public transport setting. Age and owning a driving license are factors that directly and positively affect service quality whereas education was negatively related to perceived quality. In contrast, the relationships between being a car user, gender and perceived quality were not supported. The results also showed that younger commuter appears to have lower perceptions of service quality as compared to adults. However, the current study does suggest that people with university education and above may be a better audience for advertising appeals focusing on one of these three significant dimensions of service quality.
Originality/ value
This study adds theoretical knowledge on how to assess opinions accurately of customers’ perception of service quality in public transport services as well as to provide good insight on the direct role of demographic characteristics on customers´ perceived service quality.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Accepted version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
33 - Economics. Economic science
36 - Safeguarding the mental and material necessities of life
Keywords
Permisos de conducir
Drivers' licenses
Transport públic
Local transit
Transportes urbanos
Control de calidad
Control de qualitat
Quality control
Pages
18
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Collection
7; 3
Is part of
Public Transport
Citation
Petnji Yaya, Luc Honore; Frigola Fortia, Mireia; Saurina Canals, Carme; Marimon Viadiu, Frederic. «Service quality assessment of public transport and the implication role of demographic characteristics». Public Transport, 2015, vol. 7, núm. 3, p. 409-428. Disponible en: <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12469-014-0099-7>. Fecha de acceso: 08 jul. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12469-014-0099-7
Note
“This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Public Transport. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12469-014-0099-7.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/