Influential factors and passenger satisfaction towards integrated urban-rural bus services: A case study of Chibi, China

To enhance transport accessibility and mobility in rural areas, the Chinese government has been implementing a program to integrate urban and rural bus services (urban-rural bus integration). This paper proposes a model for investigating the influential factors and passenger satisfaction towards such integrated urban-rural bus services using customer satisfaction theory. The proposed model incorporates latent variables, including bus company image, perceived quality (evaluated in terms of safety, comfort, reliability, and convenience), perceived value, passenger satisfaction, and passenger loyalty. Data were collected from both urban and rural areas in Chibi city of Hubei province, China. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to validate the relationships between the variables. The findings show that bus company image and perceived quality significantly affect passenger satisfaction towards the integrated urban-rural bus services. The Multi-Group Analysis (MGA) highlights significant heterogeneity in the perception of satisfaction among passenger groups with different genders, residences and ages. Specifically, female, urban and non-elderly residents’ attitudes are more influenced by the bus company image than male, rural and elderly ones, whereas rural and elderly residents are more sensitive to the perceived quality. These insights provide a deeper understanding of the key factors influencing passenger satisfaction and can help predict the future travel intentions of different passenger groups between urban and rural areas.