دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی تنوع فضایی کیفیت خدمات حمل و نقل در ایستگاه های راه آهن - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Passenger’s perception about transit service quality strongly depends on the context to which the passenger refers. Consequently, each attribute affecting service quality and rated in terms of satisfaction or importance could show spatial pattern across the region and/or temporal variations. Although transit service quality was largely investigated, few studies took into account the spatial variability of passengers’ responses, given that a large amount of previous studies considered customer satisfaction with transit services in a cross sectional manner only. In order to cover this lack, we propose a study focused on transit service quality evaluated at railway stations, aimed to suggest a methodology for treating spatial variation of service quality attributes. The research is supported by Customer Satisfaction Survey data collected by a railway operator providing regional services in the North of Italy, and particularly rail services of regional and suburban lines connecting different towns of the hinterland of the city of Milan. The emerging results show spatial patterns across the region of the transit service quality attributes which should be taken into account for a deeper investigation of passengers’ perceptions about rail services.

5. Discussion and conclusion

In this study we have suggested a methodology for evaluating passengers’ transit service quality satisfaction and treating spatial variation of service quality attributes across the study area. Particularly, we have focused on transit service quality evaluated at railway stations. The research was based on the data collected by means of a survey conducted by the railway service operating in the hinterland of Milan. Users were asked to express importance and satisfaction rates about service quality factors revealed on board and at the station where the trip starts. Among them, seven attributes concerning the service quality at station were selected, elaborated and included in the analysis.

The main objective of the paper was analysing the spatial variation of transit service quality evaluated at station. For this aim, we have elaborated a spatial regression named geographically weighted regression (GWR) in order to quantify how the influence of each attribute on the satisfaction with the overall service quality varies across the study area.

Firstly, we have applied techniques of spatial statistics in order to establish if the spatial pattern of data is the result of random choice or of spatial association. Global and local measures of spatial autocorrelation were applied on the attributes of transit service quality and implemented in a GIS environment. The outcomes of these spatial statistics have demonstrated that the values distribution of the attributes of service quality present spatial autocorrelation. As a consequence, no-spatial models seem to be inadequate and spatial regression model, as GWR, could be applied.