Handling stakeholder uncertain judgments in strategic transport service analyses

Abstract

The quality level of services has to be constantly controlled, especially under conditions of competition increasing and limited resources. However, considering that service performance analyses are based on stakeholders' judgments, they can be characterized by possible uncertainties related to incompleteness for partial ignorance, imprecision for subjectivity and even vagueness. Therefore, under these conditions, unreliable results can be obtained by widely used service analysis methodologies. In the present paper, a methodology based on a recent extension of the SERVQUAL model, and that uses in combined manner the fuzzy set theory and the analytic hierarchy process method is proposed to effectively handle uncertainty in service performance analyses. In particular, the fuzzy set theory is considered to deal with such uncertainty, whereas the AHP method is adopted as tool to estimate the importance weights of the strategic service attributes. Subsequently, the Italian public transport service sector is strategically analysed, and its overall service quality structure is described and, finally, the strategic analysis of the public urban transport service delivered in Palermo (Italy) is performed by means of the proposed methodology. The performed service analysis allows the most influencing service factors to be captured and commented upon. The obtained results show that the management's perception of service quality meaningfully influences the overall service performance level.