Multivariate analysis of public transport quality: a case study in a medium-sized Brazilian city

Abstract

Paper aims: This study aimed to analyze how the satisfaction level of public transport (PT) users is influenced by their socioeconomic characteristics. Originality: The analysis of how socioeconomic variables influence the satisfaction level through the association between MANOVA and exploratory analysis is still not explored, especially in Brazil and in medium-sized cities, which represent the majority of Brazilian cities. Research method: Data collection was carried out by questionnaire in a Brazilian city. The 330 users of PT evaluated their satisfaction level concerning 12 quality indicators. Statistical analyses were performed using Pearson’s correlation and MANOVA. Main findings: Most socioeconomic variables influenced user satisfaction in at least one indicator, gender and schooling being the most prominent. The results showed that women’s mean level of satisfaction is lower than men’s concerning indicators affected by gender. Fare was the indicator with the worst score, being influenced by users’ occupation. Implications for theory and practice: The study presents practical and methodological contributions. The results provides technical and scientific subsidies for public policies and service improvement. It possible to improve each indicator according to the users’ socioeconomic characteristics, encouraging the use of PT and contributing to the urban environment sustainability. The indicators accessibility, information, punctuality, public security, and frequency were used in more than 70% of the analyzed studies. Moreover, the indicators fare, travel time, crowding, stations characteristics, employee behavior, and comfort were also widely seen, in more than 40% of the articles. These findings are in agreement with De Oña & De Oña (2015), who demonstrated that there is no consensus about which quality indicators should be used and emphasized that this choice is highly dependent on the context. Despite this, the authors emphasize that the indicators frequency, punctuality, comfort, cleanliness of vehicles, safety, availability of information, courtesy of employees and fare are the most used. In this study, after evaluating the indicators that appeared in more than 40% of the articles reviewed, 12 most important indicators for the city under study were selected, according to previous research (Santos & Lima, 2021). All these works have contributed to the evaluation of the quality of PT; however, further studies to understand the determinants of demand and behavior of PT users are still needed since each case has different settings and characteristics in terms of environment, security, and