Segmentation and behaviour modelling of brazilian urban transport users. / Segmentação e modelagem comportamental de usuários dos serviços de transporte urbano brasileiros.

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2006

RESUMO

Any "business" principle of survival is the understanding of both needs or desires of goods or services consumers. Success of tangible goods depend on the observation of market specifications such as form, function, durability, safety, availability, status and price. For services, on the other hand, consumers satisfaction factors are more obscure and difficult of measure and interpret. Public transport differs from other services because it allows consumers to perform their social activities such as work, education, health, leisure or simply the consumption of other goods and services. Consumers attention is not directly focused on service quality except when something is not working properly. Another distinction between public transport and other services is its multiplicity of services and clients. Each origin - destination pair, route, schedule or mode constitutes a particular service for a specific user who performs specific social activities. Under these circumstances, users opinion surveys are perceived as a useful tool to understand transport behaviour. There are several opinion surveys of public transport users. These surveys succeeded in gathering data and analysing users opinion in order to understand each specific need. But the conclusions have been restricted to few researchersinterpretation and generally, the proposed public policies are insensitive to the idiosyncrasy of the public transport users segments and are restricted to isolated variables. This study proposes a cause - effect behavioural model relating users socioeconomic characteristics, attitudes to public transport and their behaviour towards mode choice. The basis of this study is a survey conducted by Brazilian Ministry of Cities in 2002 and released in 2003. The proposed model was tested through the segmentation of 6,960 interviewed travellers, according to a clustering analysis and applying the structural equation modeling technique. The intention was to check the hypothesis of structural heterogeneity behaviour of public transport users and the transferability of such models. The analysis performed has shown some remarkable differences between the general model and the specimen model. In the 10 cities surveyed, the general model adjusted converged to the same conclusions that the socio-economic variables are prevalent over users attitudes to explain their travel behaviours. On the other hand, the specimen model adjusted to each traveller segment, showed the relevance of image and opinion variables to explain travel behaviour. These facts support the hypotheses about structural heterogeneity of urban travellersbehaviour but also the transferability of general models.

ASSUNTO(S)

transporte público public policy public transport consumer behaviour políticas públicas comportamento do consumidor

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