Interaction between attribute importance and user satisfaction on the promotion of public transport

Latin American countries have common characteristics: increase in automobile use, and decrease in the interest of users for public transport by bus caused by unsustainable urban mobility. Of these, users’ interest in public transport by bus has the most significant potential for sustainable transport changes. Therefore, this paper aimed to understand how the interaction between the importance and satisfaction of users to transport attributes can help promote the increase in the passengers’ transport demand in medium-sized cities of developing countries. The interaction between the users’ stated importance and the users’ satisfaction for automobile and public transport by bus was analyzed regarding attributes of safety, comfort, transport costs, and travel time. The study was performed in the city of Barreiras, state of Bahia, Brazil. Likert scale data analysis used three approaches that set unique importance and satisfaction ratings employed on the graphic tool Importance-Performance Analysis. It was concluded that interaction between the data of importance and satisfaction is effective, reliable, and allows the comparative analysis between the transport attributes, enabling the prioritization of strategies that help the promotion of passenger transport.