Passenger evaluation of air-rail integration service: the roles of reliability, operational coordination, and disruption management

Air-rail integration service (ARIS) has become an important strategy for improving seamless multimodal mobility, yet limited research has comprehensively examined how passengers evaluate ARIS through the interrelationships among service quality, satisfaction, and loyalty. To address this gap, this study investigates the determinants of ARIS using questionnaire data collected from intermodal passengers at Shijiazhuang Zhengding International Airport, China. A structural equation modeling (SEM) framework, complemented by exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), was employed to examine the latent relationships among key constructs and identify the most influential service dimensions. The results show that service quality has significant positive effects on both passenger satisfaction and loyalty, while satisfaction also exerts a significant positive effect on loyalty. Compared with previous studies that primarily emphasize traditional factors such as travel time and cost, our findings reveal that reliability, emergency control, and operational performance play a more prominent role in shaping passenger evaluations of ARIS.