A Study Of Railway Passenger Service Quality In Zambia

The railway passenger service quality in Zambia remains a problem that needs to be to addressed.A lots people have opted to use other modes of transport especially road transport.Railway passenger transport being a public service more effort is required to establish how to improve services.It is very important to come up with scientific approach to address this problem.Investigating on how to improve the service quality remains a key in winning customers.It is the interest of this study to establish how to improve the service quality,modelling provides systematic way of making decisions.In this case study,multiple linear regression model and gravity model have been proposed to establish how to improve the service quality.For the multiple linear regression model,key service quality attributes are used i.e.,reliability,tangibles,assurance,responsiveness and empathy.Passengers are asked to rate the service quality attributes using a Likert scale 1 to 5 as ordinal data,examined and processed for the computation of the model using SPSS 16.0 version software in order to fulfill the objectives of the study on how to improve railway passenger service.And by looking at passenger satisfaction,determining attributes which have significant influence on passenger satisfaction.The SPSS version 16.0 software is used to draw the service quality attributes into a mathematical relationship in this study.The multivariate linear regression model indicates that responsiveness(beta coefficient 0.602)and reliability(beta coefficient 0.599)are the most important attributes for improving passenger satisfaction.The other objective is to predict operational conditions between zones.In this case,a typical gravity model is used on assumptions that if the service quality is improved there will high demand for the service and the company should improve further to meet the demand.According to the results there is need to increase train frequency in order to meet the anticipated demand.The paper also contains some detailed suggestions on how to improve passenger service quality and make meaningful decisions.Most of the researchers rely on one model especially the Multiple regression model solely based on the primary data from customers.In this study two methods are used to further suggest how to improve the service quality by incorporating the gravity model.The rationale behind is that if the service quality is improved the operational conditions will also change.Hence,the need to adjust the operational conditions to hold and meet the increase in demand.