A Review of Methodological Approaches and Modeling Techniques in Service Quality Evaluation of Surface Transportation during the Last Decade

Abstract

During the duration of the last decade, a growing interest has been noticed among transport practitioners and researchers to better understand the concept of service quality in the field of surface transportation and identify important service quality (SQ) attributes of different transportation services since these results have implications for transport managers. Due to advancements in computer technology and the availability of software packages, researchers are better able to extract meaningful results from passengers’ opinions collected through stated preference surveys and communicate their findings to transport managers looking to ameliorate SQ to boost ridership on a limited budget. Since the concept of SQ is itself complex owing to the nature of the service itself compared to a tangible product and characteristics of SQ attribute, different advanced modelling techniques based on multivariate analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence paradigms have become popular tools among researchers. This paper aims to summarize the trends of the SQ research in the field of surface transportation during the last decade with a focus on the methodological approaches and modelling techniques and delineate future directions for research in this field.