The Influence of Service Quality Factors in the Preferences Concerning the Use of Car and Bus

This paper describes a Stated Preferences experiment to simulate travellers’ preferences among different bus services, and between car and bus travel, by taking account of service quality factors. The experiment was designed on the basis of previous studies conducted by the authors on the same research topic. The paper proposes a rating experiment with which to investigate users’ preferences among hypothetical bus services characterized by different levels of service quality factors; in addition, the paper reports a choice experiment conducted on each user to investigate how service quality factors affect the choice between bus and private car use. The experimental data were collected by a survey carried out on a sample of passengers travelling by express bus services.