Serbisyong ayos: a study on the effects of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) 1 service quality on the satisfaction of its passengers

Abstract

The Light Rail Transit-1 (LRT-1), the railway service that started its operations back in 1984, continues to serve the passengers who travel across the Metro. As the use of such a service is a necessity for an average of 500,000 passengers of the LRT-1, the company must not in any other way take advantage of this fact and must continue to ensure that its quality of service meets the satisfaction of its passengers. Like any organization, it must seek the most appropriate service performance measures to ensure that their customers are receiving their promised service, "SERBISYONG AYOS!”. In this respect, surveys serve as a good instrument to measure the satisfaction of the customers and to better understand the needs of the customers for management improvement. This research thus focused on determining the effects of five service quality dimensions namely, tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy on the satisfaction of the LRT-1 passengers. A total of 440 passengers coming from the EDSA station and Monumento station were asked to answer a survey regarding their expectations and perceptions on the quality of services delivered by the LRT-1. Results showed that passengers are not satisfied as their expectations of the service are not met with an average SERVQUAL score of -0.37. Expectation scores of passengers are higher than the perception scores of the service having an average of 3.58 and 3.21, respectively. Overall, both reliability and assurance scored -0.67 and are the two factors in which passengers are least satisfied. It must be noted also that assurance ranked as the most important service quality dimension followed by tangibles, reliability, responsiveness and empathy. Tangibles, reliability, responsiveness and assurance are the dimensions that showed a positive correlation with passenger satisfaction. Among the five service quality dimensions using the logistic regression, tangibles, reliability and responsiveness are found to be the three significant predictors of the satisfaction of the passengers. In line with the findings of this research, the Light Rail Transit Authority must focus on the improvement of their services in terms of the reliability and assurance aspect of their service. Moreover, the significant predictors of satisfaction, tangibles, reliability and responsiveness dimensions of their service must also be included in the assessment of their services as there are no existing surveys or passenger satisfaction research done by the said company as of the moment.