Evaluating City Bus Service Based on Zone of Tolerance of Expectation and Normalized Importance

Authors

Kai-Chieh Hu

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2010

Subject Area

planning - service quality, land use - planning, economics - appraisal/evaluation, mode - bus

Keywords

Taipei (Taiwan), Strategies, Strategic planning, Service quality, Quality of service, Priorities, Passengers, Passenger service quality, Objectives, Intracity bus transportation, Goals, Evaluation, Bus transit

Abstract

Improving the quality of the city bus service is an important topic for public transportation management. One way of measuring this improvement is to measure the gap between the passengers' expectation and their perception. The expectation can be divided into desired service and adequate service, and the difference between these two is the tolerant zone of expectation. The present study has two purposes. The first is to propose a model for evaluating service quality based on the zone of tolerance of expectation (ZSQ). The second is to build an analytical framework for prioritizing attributes (NIZSQ, normalized importance-ZSQ analysis) through a quadrant analysis based on ZSQ and normalized importance. This research took the Taipei city bus service as an example. The data were collected by means of questionnaires. Statistical analysis was adopted to test the hypotheses. The result showed that the top two priorities for improvement are those attributes that are relevant to the interaction with the passengers, and the support from operations management.

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