Perceived Service Quality Attributes in Public Transport: Inferences from Complaints and Negative Critical Incidents

Abstract

67 A sample of 200 complaints filed to a public transport company and 210 negative critical incidents (NC!s) obtained from on-board illferviews were analyzed with the purpose of il~ferring perceived service quality (PSQ) attributes of public transport. The most frequent complaints and NC!s concemed employee behavior and punctuality , followed by missing or inaccurate information and inadequate planning. In a follow-up mail survey, a representative sample of 997 respondents reported if they remembered having experienced prototypical NC!s constructed on the basis of the complaints. C01~/in11ing the validity of the i1~ferred PSQ attributes, all NC/s were reported to have been experienced by at least some respondellfs. NC/s related to employee behavior were, l10weve1: less frequem(v remembered, whereas those related to vehicle design and space, punctuality, and traffic planning were more frequellf(v re-Vol. 2. No. I. 1998 68 Journal of Public Transportation membered. Taken together, the results suggest that PSQ attributes in public transport refer to employee behavior, reliability, and simplicity. Finally, inferences made from customer complaints and negative critical incidents are shown to extend our knowledge of perceived service quality attributes in public transport. Introduction The problem currently facing public transport operators is that although travel demand steadily increases, the demand for public transport declines (Benister 1992) due to increased automobile use. Andreassen (1995) feels that transport operators often make the mistake of mass marketing a standard service to a heterogeneous market. Changing the marketing strategy in a desirable direction requires a focus on how customers' perceptions are related to characteristics of the service. However, research on public transport has tended to emphasize the technical aspects of the service (e.g., vehicle and facility design), leaving out psychological and social aspects that may be more important (Everett and Watson 1987). It has, therefore, been argued that transportation systems need to be considered from a behavioral perspective rather than from an exclusively technological view (Hartgen 1981). Knowledge of perceived quality of public transport services may be essential if the service is to become more attractive to consumers who have other alternatives (e.g., automobile). Such knowledge gained from behavioral service-quality research will guide the formulation of strategies that can influence customers' travel choices and satisfaction. The focus of this article is perceived service quality of public transport services (i.e., buses and streetcars). Specifically, the aim is to empirically examine whether previous findings concerning perceived service quality (PSQ) attributes generalize to public transport services. More than 30 studies during the last I 0 years of customer PSQ were examined in a recent review (Edvardsson 1996) showing that how the employees treat the customers, reliability of the service, simplicity (e.g., clearness and accessibility of information), and recovery when something goes wrong are significant factors. The hypothesis of this