| dc.description.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 | |
