Exploring Influencing Factors of Passenger Satisfaction toward Bus Transit in Small-Medium City in China

Xiaowei Li,Jun Chen,Xuefeng Deng,Jingkun Fan,Yao Wu,Maria Alessandra Ragusa

doi:10.1155/2020/8872115

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the factors influencing passengers’ satisfaction toward bus transit and develop the improvement strategy for the small-medium city. Data including individual attributes, travel activity attributes, and perceived service attributes were collected in the city of Weinan, China. The ordered logit (OL) model and ordered Probit (OP) model were employed to explore the significant factors associated with passengers’ satisfaction toward bus transit. The odds ratio (OR) was applied to quantitatively measure the effects of the significant factors. Improving strategies of bus transit service were proposed based on the model results using the three-factor theory. Results show that the OL model outperforms the OP model. The age, daily average waiting time, perceived waiting time, transferring convenience, the attitude of the driver, intelligent travel information service, hygienic environment inside the bus, ticket price, bus route setting, and bus stop setting significantly affect the passengers’ satisfaction. Among them, the ticket price, perceived waiting time, bus stop setting, intelligent travel information service, transferring convenience, and bus route setting were identified as exciting factors. It is recommended that optimization of bus route and bus stop setting, building bus dedicated lanes, optimizing dynamic charging system, and providing intelligent travel information service could be effective strategies to improve passengers’ satisfaction toward bus transit in Chinese small-medium cities.

Highlights

With the expansion of the urban scale and the rapid increase in traffic demand, traffic congestion has been a serious issue in China
Ten indicators of service quality of bus transit were selected from ISASCTM, including waiting time, riding comfort, bus route setting, bus stop setting, and so on [3]. e passengers were asked to evaluate each of these service quality attributes based on a 4-point Likert scale from unqualified to excellent
Ordered Logit Model. e ordered logit (OL) model is derived by defining an unobserved variable Z, which is used as a basis for modeling the ordinal data

Summary

Introduction

With the expansion of the urban scale and the rapid increase in traffic demand, traffic congestion has been a serious issue in China. An important reason for the low passenger volume and the low sharing rate of bus transit is the low service quality of this traffic mode in small-medium cities [1, 2]. It is valuable to explore the influencing factors that affect passengers’ satisfaction with bus transit in smallmedium cities. It can provide targeted strategies for bus companies to improve the quality of the services as well as to enhance the attraction of bus transit in small-medium cities. E objective of this study is to explore the factors affecting the passengers’ satisfaction toward bus transit in Chinese small-medium cities. Improving strategies based on the model results were discussed using the three-factor theory

Literature Review

Data Collection

Methodology

Results and Discussion

Possible overkill