Moderation of Perceived Safety in Public Bus Transport on the Link between Bus Route-Time Design and Commuters’ intentions

Ensuring public transportation is safe is not only vital but also a fundamental aspect of developing inclusive, reliable, and sustainable mobility for everyone. This paper examines the moderating effect of safety in the privately-owned State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) under the Government of Kerala on the impact of Bus Route-Time design on continuing and word-of-mouth (W-o-M) intentions of passengers through a comparative analysis. The study on daily public bus passengers in Kerala selected a sample size of 686 with 252 State-owned bus passengers and 434 private bus passengers proportionate to Kerala’s bus population ratio. The research was conducted at fourteen key bus stations using purposive and lottery random sampling. The reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha, ensuring strong internal consistency. The study verified the data’s reliability and validity using CFA and pilot testing. The IBM SPSS AMOS 21 software was utilised to investigate the moderating effects. It is evident from studies that bus routes and time design have a substantial influence on different aspects of service quality and passenger behaviour. Safety is still essential no matter the other aspects of service quality. The research shows that perceived safety strengthens the connection between route and time design and passenger intentions, which is more visible in state-owned bus services.