Best-worst scaling approach to measure public transport user quality perceptions and preferences in cape town

Abstract

Public transport plays an important role in human society. Even more so in the context of developing countries where a large share of trip makers are captive users of public transport trying to gain access to economic activities, schools and other social and cultural activities. User quality and user perceptions are essential indicators for service providers to understand their service offering better, also in a context of captivity. One needs to understand which external factors are essential and which ones are sufficient and the extent to which they are. Understanding the order and magnitude of the importance of these external factors is of great importance to service providers when wanting to improve user experiences, for planning purposes, for marketing purposes as well as for fare setting. Considering this, the primary focus of this research is to provide empirical evidence on the existence of a hierarchy in transportation needs. Such evidence is provided in this research by investigating the existence of a user quality pyramid on public transport modes as claimed in literature. We do this for the City of Cape Town using the Best-Worst Scaling (BWS) method, which measures consumer priorities in a manner that is robust and transparent, by compelling respondents to make trade-offs among items user experience and satisfaction. BWS is a survey technique of measuring individuals’ priorities as it identifies the extremes in a given list as best as well as worst items and is used in other disciplines where prioritisation of items is required to guide decisions. In this study, a total of 282 public transport users rank the best and the worst quality attributes in a given set. The research findings indicate that travel time followed by affordability are the most important quality attributes in regional public transport modes. Equally, in- vehicle security followed by service transfers are the least important public transport quality attributes. We use this to construct and critique the user quality pyramid