Satisfaction with public transport services

Sammanfattning: Satisfaction is assumed to be an important cause of attitude change by acting as a mediator between preexposure and postexposure attitudes. A number of factors account for whether one is satisfied or not with a specific performance. One factor is expectations, another one performance, and a third factor disconfirmation of expectations. The aim of the present thesis was to investigate factors that have an impact on the satisfaction with public transport services. More specifically, the relationships were investigated between negative critical incidents, satisfaction with perceived service quality, and overall satisfaction. Also important was to find out what constitute quality and satisfaction in public transport services. Two studies were conducted. In Study I data were analyzed from customer complaints, onboard interviews, and a mail survey. The results suggested that employee behavior, reliability, simplicity, and design constitute perceived quality attributes in public transport services. Study II confirmed these results by means of further analyses of the covariances of rated frequencies of remembered negative critical incidents as well as of ratings of perceived service quality attributes. Furthermore, the frequency of negative critical incidents, defined as disconfirmation of expectations, was found to negatively affect overall satisfaction. However, the relationship was not direct but mediated by satisfaction with perceived service quality attributes. Thus, it is suggested that when the number of negative critical incidents increase, the effect is coded as perceived service quality attributes. In addition, the frequency of negative critical incidents increases with the frequency of use that is directly related to overall satisfaction and the degree of choice with different means of transportation