Empirical Study On Influencing Factors Of Passenger Satisfaction Of Waiting For Urban Buses

With the tremendous increase in our county’s economy, the level of urbanization is further promoted, and a large rural population is pouring into cities, all of which lead to a great burden on urban transportation system. If there are no reasonable planning and administration, the immense speed of urbanization would cause problems like traffic jams, low efficiency of outgoing and environmental pollution. Based on the theoretical and empirical studies, advanced development of bus system could serve as an effective solution to traffic jams and environmental problems.Many cities in our country have been committed to promoting urban transportation and its service level, so as to attract more citizens to choose bus as their traveling tool. Bus system is so complicated that its service quality is categorized into different types, such as the quality when waiting a bus, the quality when during the trip, the station’s service quality and the information quality. Based on the existing studies, this thesis has made a profound research on bus passengers’satisfaction, discussed its influencing factors, built a model to measure the passengers’satisfaction when waiting a bus, and thus search for the relationship between satisfaction and its influencing factors.The main work of this thesis is as follows:Initially, the questionnaire focused on the satisfaction of waiting a bus in Chengdu was worked out, with the methods of both RP and SP. Groups of people who regularly go to work or school were specially investigated using multistage sampling, statistical analysis was further carried out.Furthermore, with the methods of factor analysis, all the influencing factors on the satisfaction of waiting a bus were analyzed, common factor of distinct variables were further found and classified. Based on the average and importance ranking of the factors, waiting time was confirmed as the primary influencing factor to the satisfaction when waiting a bus.In addition, based on the dates obtained by the questionnaire, the functional relationship of waiting time and satisfaction of waiting buses was explored by the means of BP neural network. The dates were further simulated using the software of ORIGIN, and the former relationship was finally described as decreasing exponential function.Last but not least, considering that different reference points would cause different psychological perception for a passenger, the formation and changing regulation of the reference points were observed and the multiple regression model was further built focused on the influencing factors of these points. Four variables combinations of occupation, expected intervals of starting time, the time shown by the electronic station, and the general waiting time have significant effect on the time reference points.This thesis studied the influencing factors on passengers’satisfaction when waiting a bus based on empirical researching methods. The conclusions would contribute to the improvement of operational strategies and service quality of bus companies.