Exploring paratransit service quality based on low-income women's perception: A case study in Dhaka city by structural equation model (SEM)

In developing countries paratransit plays a vital role as a public transport mode since mass transit system is inadequate. This research investigates low-income working womens satisfaction level on various service features of paratransit modes based on their experience. Structural Equation Model (SEM) was employed to capture low-income working women's perceptions of paratransit service quality (SQ) in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. Achieving the study objective, a questionnaire survey was conducted on existing paratransit routes from Kamrangichor and Jhauchor slum areas where no bus service is available. Total 410 regular paratransit users who usually use this mode getting to and from workplace participated in the survey during July 2018. To evaluate the paratransit SQ the passengers were asked to rate their perception about 22 service attributes on a likert scale of five points. A series of SEMs were developed to explore the relationship of service features for the overall paratransit SQ. Among the five models the best one is selected by different goodness-of-fit values (CFI = 0.82, TLI = 0.79, RMSEA = 0.12, SRMR = 0.059, AIC = 18,666.94). Model 5 is the best structure developed with four latent variables: ‘Service feature’, ‘System performance’, ‘Safety and security’ and ‘Reliability’ This research explores that ‘Security of goods’, ‘Security of passengers’, ‘Movement flexibility in any road’, ‘Travel expenditure compared to other transport’, and ‘Quality of driver’ are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th most significant variables that impact on the SQ positively, which represents the real scenario. The outcomes of this research might assist operators and policymakers in formulating policies to enhance urban paratransit SQ.