Promet (Zagreb) (Apr 2016)

Factors of Perceived Waiting Time and Implications on Passengers’ Satisfaction with Waiting Time

  • Shumin Feng,
  • Haiyue Wu,
  • Xianglong Sun,
  • Zhenning Li

DOI
https://doi.org/10.7307/ptt.v28i2.1726
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 28, no. 2
pp. 155 – 163

Abstract

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In order to explore the influence factors on perceived waiting time, a multiple linear regression model has been used to quantitatively describe the relationship between perceived waiting time and various factors. The model is established with 234 data, which is surveyed with questionnaire at three stops in Harbin, China. The results show that several certain factors (“trip purpose - where to”, “presence of a companion - whether one has a companion or not”, “having a timing device - whether one has a timing device or not”, “riding frequency - how many times one takes one line per week” and “waiting behaviour - what one does while waiting for a bus”) have significant influence on perceived waiting time, which confirms previous findings and supports transferability of results. The significance of “waiting mood - how about the mood while waiting for a bus” and “reserved waiting time - how long one will wait” are confirmed for the first time in this study. In contrast to previous studies, “waiting time interval - for how long in one day” is a negative variable and socioeconomic variables are non-significant. And it is found that the relationship between perceived waiting time and passengers’ satisfaction with the waiting time follows a decreasing exponential distribution. With this model, the variation trend of the section, where passenger satisfaction value is larger than 0 is obviously steeper than the section smaller than 0. Such result proves that passenger mood with short waiting time is more sensitive than with longer waiting time. And the borderline perceived waiting time, distinguishing satisfied from dissatisfied passengers is proven to be 7.87 minutes when assignment interval of satisfaction is (-25.25], when satisfaction is positive (larger than 0), the accuracy being 70.30%, while the accuracy is 82.71% for negative satisfaction (less than 0).

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