Perceived Atmosphere of Public Transport and Customer’s Satisfaction: an Attitudinal Study

The understanding of the daily experience of the public transport users is an important aspect to investigate. It is strategic for the public transport companies to increase the quality of their services. This paper aims at exploring how distinctive atmospheres affect the users' judgment on the service quality of public transport in two different cities, Torino and Teheran. To this end, a survey has been designed to investigate the attitudes among a sample of students living in the two cities to understand if the different social and cultural contexts can influence their perception, considering that, despite the difference in the urban systems, Tehran and Torino have comparable public transport infrastructures. The survey provided the design of a questionnaire to be administered to the sample, who also participated to a focus group. The data were analyzed using the SPSS for the statistical analysis and ATLAS.ti for the textual analysis of the discussions. The results show some independent factors related to the customers’ satisfaction of the public transport. The analysis of quantitative data demonstrated a significant change in users’ attitude about travel time, comfort, crowding and safety and security of traveling. The qualitative analysis revealed that the social status and the environmental conditions affect the customers’ judgment, which is called effective atmosphere. The Kelman’s process of opinion change (POC) and the Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour (TPB) allow describing the statistical difference between the two groups. The change of judgment caused by affective atmosphere completes the mentioned theory's description. The combination of the TPB theory and of the impact of the affective atmosphere is a new approach to interpret and predict the customer satisfaction level.