The Estimation of Weight of Factors Influencing Bus Transit Service Quality: Evidence from KDU Commuters

Abstract

Among the many reasons, lack of service quality provision of the public transport systems in Sri Lanka results in continuous shift of passengers from public transport to private vehicles. This research is based on estimating the weights of service quality expectation components perceived by the passengers. Factors identified as components of the service quality were walking time from home to the bus halt, waiting time at bus halt to get the bus, in vehicle travel time, in-bus environment and the station environment. Different factor levels for each of the factors were identified through the pilot interviews with passengers. 16 cards that consisted of the different levels of all five factors were developed using factorial design. The respondents were asked to rank the choices for all the 16 cards from a sample of 300 bus passengers including 150 males and 150 females who were the users of bus routes 100, 101, 154 and 158 in Colombo district. The passengers of General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University were used for this research Conjoint analysis was used to analyze the data in order to get the utility levels and weights of each attribute. Through the conjoint analysis utility levels of walking time, waiting time, travel time, in-bus environment and the station environment were generated. The model proved to have high accuracy and validity. In this research the variation of service quality attributes with the gender also were found. Majority of the passenger’s preference was the walking time given the priority as their service quality expectation. Then travel time, waiting time, in-bus environment and the station environment were the priority order respectively. Male passengers also valued the walking time as the highest and then the travel time, in-bus environment, station environment and the walking time respectively. But the preference of females differed from that because their order of priority was walking time, waiting time, travel time, in-bus environment and the station environment respectively. service quality factors that males expect and female service quality expectation