Identifying factors affecting citizens' satisfaction of ridesourcing taxis and measuring it in Damghan city

Cities are expanding. One of the problems that cities face is the need to relocate population. Usually, as cities get bigger, the problems of intra-city transportation become more complex. Since the construction and operation of public transportation systems requires a lot of money, choosing the best intercity public transportation system requires careful consideration and evaluation. Without any exaggeration, since the beginning of the arrival of motor vehicles in Iran, transportation management in our cities has faced challenges for many reasons, such as the importance of tools and the lack of a culture of use. Also, due to the serious weakness of public transportation, taxis have become important and have a special place in the urban transportation system, to the extent that in some small and medium-sized cities up to 80% of intra-city transportation is done by taxi. Advances in technology have led to the increasing use of the Internet by various groups and occupations. This issue has also entered the transportation system and has led to the creation of new methods in world transportation. One of the reasons for the low satisfaction of citizens with public transportation is the lack of attention to the expansion of Internet systems. Failure in using online systems has increased costs and confused travelers. Continuation of the existing trend can lead to new issues such as increasing the maintenance costs of transportation infrastructure and reducing their use. The high share of taxis as a method of public transportation in urban transportation in Iran, puts addressing the issue of efficiency and effectiveness of this device first, according to its new type (smart taxis such as Maxim, etc.) and a large number of stakeholders including taxi drivers and citizens. In this research, the intelligent transportation system in Damghan city has been studied and seeks to answer this question: What factors have made citizens satisfied with intelligent transportation systems?

The present research is descriptive - analytical and in terms of essence is practical. By reviewing different texts and research background, indicators of citizens' satisfaction with the intelligent transportation system were collected. The questionnaire was used to collect information. The statistical population of the present study is students living in Bustan and Golestan neighborhoods of Damghan in year 1399. This statistical population has been selected for two reasons. The first reason is the weakness of Damghan public transportation system in this part of the city and the second reason is the greater desire of students to use ridesourcing taxi systems. Sampling was done by using random sampling methods. Citizens' opinions were then analyzed using SPSS software. Factor analysis method was used to analyze the data. In this method, all indicators are divided into 4 categories: mobility, access and economic well-being, legality and welfare facilities. Then, the impact of these factors on explaining citizens' satisfaction with Internet transportation has been determined. The Cronbach's alpha value for the whole questionnaire was 0.976, which indicates that the questionnaire has high reliability.

At this stage, after entering the questionnaires in SPSS, a table of commonalities related to each variable was formed, which shows the amount of common variance of each variable with other variables. Then variables with commonalities less than 0.4 are removed to increase the explanatory rate of the model. The KMO value was 0.938, which indicates that the data are suitable for factor analysis. Also, the level of significance is 0.000 and this shows that this analysis is at a desirable level of significance. Finally, the factor matrix is rotated so that each of the relevant indicators has the most relationship with the relevant factors. The final 4 factors were identified as effective factors on citizens' satisfaction. The first factor, which explains 24.628 of the total variance, was correlated with indicators such as ease of access at different times, coverage, can be named access and economic efficiency. The second factor, which explains 21.242 of the total variance, was correlated with safety indicators, compliance with the rules, and can be named as legality. The third factor explains 16.382 of the total variance and has been correlated with the indicators of car number, heating and cooling facilities, can be named as welfare facilities. The fourth factor, explains 10.58 of the total variance and was correlated with the indicators of return of leftovers and security of goods, can be named as the possibility of moving goods.

A total of 4 factors of access and economic welfare, legality, amenities and the possibility of moving goods show citizens' satisfaction with ridesourcing taxi drivers. The important thing about these factors is to prioritize them so that the change in each of the factors how much reduces or increases the amount of satisfaction. The factor of access and economic welfare has the highest priority among the factors and changes in its indicators such as increasing accessibility and reducing prices have a great impact on improving citizen satisfaction. The point that has reduced the citizens' satisfaction with the access factor and social welfare is the lack of easy access at night. After that, the legality factor has the second priority. It seems that the important point to increase citizens' satisfaction with this factor is monitoring. In terms of legality, night safety and compliance with traffic laws indicators have not been to the satisfaction of citizens. The third and fourth priorities are allocated to the welfare facilities and the possibility of moving goods. Changes in these two factors cannot have as many effects as the first and second factors, but will increase the motivation and desire of citizens to use ridesourcing taxi. In examining these factors, it is clear that citizens have given different answers to this issue. This difference stems from the fact that the existence of amenities in different cars are different, and in general, there are no specific criteria for reviewing amenities by the providers of these services.