IMPACT OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION QUALITY ON PASSENGERS' SATISFACTION IN THE BENIN METROPOLIS, NIGERIA

Public Transportation is essential in urban environment especially in developing countries where many people cannot afford personal transport due to low income. This study was conducted to examine the impact of public transportation quality on passengers’ satisfaction in the Benin Metropolis, Nigeria. Five commonly recognized quality indicators of public transportation were selected. These are affordability, accessibility, reliability, frequency and safety/security. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey design, using questionnaire to collect data from a sample of 775 public transportation users spread across 25 communities of the study area through randomization. The data were analyzed in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, while the stated hypotheses were tested using both binary logistic regression and Kendall coefficient of concordance. The result as a whole showed that 65.2% (Cox and Snell R Square) and 92.3% (Nagelkerke R Square) of the variance in public transportation satisfaction was influenced by variation in the selected indicators. It was also shown that four of the five indicators were discovered to make significant impact to the study, but with safety/security and accessibility of public transportation respectively returning the highest positive (88.211) and negative (0.997) influence on passengers’ satisfaction. The Kendall coefficient of concordance revealed that there was a significant relationship in the rating of the influence of the selected indicators on public transportation satisfaction. The study concluded that public transportation quality influenced the level of satisfaction in the study area. It is recommended that relevant government agencies and public transportation departments should pay attention to the behaviour of the various public transportation indicators in the study area in order to monitor the quality of public transportation service delivery as well as passengers’ satisfaction