Modeling and Evaluation of Factors Affecting Public Transportation System User Satisfaction: A Case Study of Tehran Metro and BRT

Satisfaction is an important concept that deserves further interest. From consumer research, satisfaction is known to be of great value in understanding customers’ perceptions and evaluations, repeatedly showing itself to be an important indicator of future customer behavior. Customer satisfaction, therefore, highlights and explains the link between what a company does (in terms of the products and services offered) and how its customers react. For public transport, this link is a key concern. In many countries, major investments are being made in public transport systems in order to make them more competitive with other means of transport, most notably private cars. New services are being developed and old ones are being improved. However, an increase in supply (qualitatively or quantitatively) will not automatically lead to a corresponding increase in demand and satisfaction. To make sure that investment really attracts the existing and potential customers expected, knowledge of satisfaction should provide policymakers and operational managers in the public transport system with valuable information. In particular, satisfaction studies can provide decision makers with information about what customers consider important, as well as information about how the existing public transport service is perceived as performing in these dimensions. In this study, the factors affecting people's satisfaction with public transportation (including metro and high-speed buses) in Tehran are investigated. Behavioral inclination theory has been used for this purpose. According to this theory, people's satisfaction is influenced by two factors: perceived value and quality of service. The results of structural equation model payment using 257 collected data show a direct and significant effect of both variables in both metro and high-speed buses. The results also show that in the metro, the quality of service has a greater effect on satisfaction than the perceived value. The opposite is true on high-speed buses.