TITLE:
Exploring the Commuters’ Willingness-to-Pay and Its Influencing Factors for an Improved Public Bus Service in Dhaka City
AUTHORS:
Ayesha Umme, Kojima Aya, Kubota Hisashi
KEYWORDS:
WTP, Public Bus, Harassment, Improved Service Quality, Security, Socio-Demographic Features
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.13 No.2,
February
27,
2023
ABSTRACT: Improved transportation services are a crucial
component of urban growth, particularly in emerging cities like Dhaka. Ensuring
an improved public bus service quality is a challenge for the city’s transport
planners and policy makers. Nevertheless, this challenge can’t be met without
the support of the residents of this city. This study intends to evaluate the
commuters’ willingness to pay (WTP) for an improved and better public bus
service quality in Dhaka city. It also attempts to explore the factors
affecting the commuters’ WTP amounts. In order to accomplish the study’s goals,
a stated preference survey was designed to enquire into the whys and wherefores
of female passengers’ harassment on public buses and also to prefer some influential
service quality features. WTP values of respondents were calibrated using
binary and ordinal logistic models, and these models were developed using SPSS
version 26. The results indicate that the majority of respondents were willing
to pay more for better service facilities, and they point to security as the
most important factor in determining how much extra fare commuters are willing
to pay. The results also demonstrate that commuters’ WTP amounts are highly
influenced by the respondents’ monthly income. Results from this study have
important policy implications, such as protecting women’s safety on public
transportation and taking commuters’ socio-demographic characteristics into
account before enacting any legislation or increasing fares.