An Online-review-driven Large-scale Group Evaluation Model For Quality Measurement Of High-speed Rail In-cabin Passenger Transport Services

With the development of high-speed rail(HSR)technology,HSR has become an important mode of public transportation,which has made great contributions to China’s short and medium distance passenger transport.And it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.In addition to technological breakthroughs,the service quality of HSR is also a development factor that cannot be ignored.In order to promote the development of HSR and improve the public service system,ensuring the service quality of HSR is the premise.Among the HSR services,in-cabin services are most closely related to the passenger,which has a strong impact on passengers’ ride comfort experience.As the end users of HSR incabin service,passenger satisfaction can be used as a standard to measure the service quality.Therefore,this study aims to build an evaluation model of HSR in-cabin service quality based on passenger satisfaction.The evaluating result can reflect the current level of HSR in-cabin service quality in China and identify the key elements of improving incabin service quality.Then,reference and suggestions are provided for the improvement of HSR in-cabin services.In this study,online review analysis technology was introduced to identify six major passenger demands(PDs)of HSR in-cabin services by taking online reviews related to HSR in-cabin service experience published by HSR passengers on social media platforms as the carrier,so as to construct the evaluation index system of HSR in-cabin service quality.Through the application of online and offline questionnaire survey method,stratified sampling method is used to select representative HSR passengers for in-depth investigation.The generalized comparative linguistic expressions based on context-free grammar was introduced to represent the importance of different PDs.Then,the satisfaction degrees of PDs were measured by interval-valued 2-tuple linguistic information.On the basis of this,the paper puts forward a method to determine the importance of individual passengers through TOPSIS model,and gives a specific way to determine the importance of PDs by Fuzzy Best and Worst Method based on the probability distribution of hesitant fuzzy linguistic information.Therefore,the paper establishes a HSR in-cabin service quality evaluation model based on the framework of large group decision making method,and puts forward improvement strategy of HSR in-cabin service quality based on the Importance-Performance analysis method.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)For HSR in-cabin services,the main concerns of passengers include: Civilization and quietness degree of the in-cabin environment;Professional skills and service attitudes of the attendants;Strength and stability of in-cabin network signals;Availability and design rationality of power sockets,toilets,and other facilities;Quality of the in-cabin air;Space and comfort of the seats.These PDs have a significant impact on HSR in-cabin service quality and should be regarded as the key elements to improve the HSR in-cabin services.(2)The importance degrees of HSR in-cabin passenger demands are different.The order of passenger demands in order of importance is as follows: Civilization and quietness degree of the in-cabin environment;Space and comfort of the seats;Quality of the in-cabin air;Strength and stability of in-cabin network signals;Availability and design rationality of power sockets,toilets,and other facilities;Professional skills and service attitudes of the attendants.The results show that the most important factors for passengers are the factors that directly affect their physical comfort,including in-cabin environment,seat and air quality.Secondly,the factors affecting entertainment,daily business processing,keeping in touch with the outside world,including network signals,power sockets and other facilities.Finally,the HSR crew service,namely the professional skills and service attitudes of the attendants.Therefore,the factors affecting passengers’ physical comfort should be regarded as the key guarantee elements of HSR in-cabin service.(3)At present,passenger comprehensive satisfaction with HSR in-cabin service is still at a low level,only 24.81%,indicating that the quality of HSR in-cabin service needs to be improved.There were differences in the satisfaction of passenger demands,but none of them reached a high level.Therefore,various HSR in-cabin services related to these passenger demands have yet to be perfected and improved.(4)In order to optimize the allocation of resources and improve the effectiveness of promoting the quality of HSR in-cabin service,the priority of improving the service quality of PDs is divided into four levels according to the importance and satisfaction of PDs.The result is,“Civilization and quietness degree of the in-cabin environment” ranking first,“Strength and stability of in-cabin network signals” and “Availability and design rationality of power sockets,toilets,and other facilities” ranking second,“Quality of the in-cabin air” and “Space and comfort of the seats” ranking third,and “Professional skills and service attitudes of the attendants” ranking the last.In the process of improving HSR in-cabin service,resources can be allocated to PDs at the top of the priority list.Through giving priority to measures such as strengthening the environmental management of cabins,setup silent carriages,and improving the signal strength and stability of in-cabin network,the quality of HSR in-cabin service can be improved more effectively.