The impact of commuters' psychological feelings due to delay on perceived quality of a rail transport

Public transport's delay has become an integral part of the daily routine for many commuters, and become more intense as people are under more time pressure and deadline. This study was set forward to study a relationship between various psychological feelings that the commuters might experience due to delay and the level of transport satisfaction. One of the most notorious rail transport in Malaysia was employed as the case study. The passengers of that rail transport often experience more than an hour of delay due to malfunctions or other mechanical problems of that transport. Our instruments include 396 fully completed commuters' responses at the locations of the waiting time. The instruments include three subsections: demographic, physical, and psychological behaviors that commuters might experience. An indicator was also used to obtain the passengers' opinions about the impacts of delay on the level of the perceived quality of the transport. The ordered mixed logit model was employed for the analysis. The mixed model was considered to provide more flexibility and to prevent biased point estimates. That is especially important as it is expected that the point estimates of some commuters' feelings might vary across population based on factors such as the commuters' objectives of travel, or level of urgency to reach the destination. The results highlighted, for instance, the feelings of being tired or nervous to be random in predicting the perceived quality of the transport. The results also indicated that the interactions between age, gender, and level of education, and also neck pain, and an increased heartbeat should be considered, instead of their sole main effects. Also, evaluating the heterogeneity in taste revealed that the change in a random parameter of feeling nervous is dependent on the parameter of commuters' gender. Overall, the results provide important insights regarding various feelings that the commuters experienced, which impact their perceived quality of rail transportation. Extensive discussion regarding the link between the study's findings and mindsponse theory was given in the Discussion and Conclusion sections of this study.

Automated summary

This study investigated the impact of various psychological feelings experienced by commuters due to delays on their perceived quality of rail transportation in Malaysia. The findings highlighted the importance of considering interactions between different feelings and individual characteristics in predicting transport satisfaction. Additionally, the results emphasized the need to evaluate heterogeneity in tastes when studying commuters' responses to delays.