Perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions structural equation model for the Metro of Seville, Spain

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions for Metro of Seville, Spain, a metropolitan, partially underground light rail transit (LRT) service. A total of 3,211 users participated in the case study by completing a questionnaire with four parts: users' attitudes about the public transit service, users' perceptions of service quality, travel habits, and socioeconomic characteristics of the participants. A seven-step analytic process was applied to the questionnaire instrument to adapt it to the specific characteristics of the service, to purify the scale, and to reduce the number of items describing the service into fewer underlying dimensions. Then, the above-mentioned relationships between perceptions, satisfaction, and intentions of users concerning the LRT service were estimated with the use of a structural equation model (SEM) approach. Three SEMs were calibrated: one for all the users, one for captive users, and one for noncaptive users of the service. The outcomes of the models provided interesting findings and identified some differences in the attitudes of these two groups of passengers toward the LRT service.