Identification of Priority Attributes for Improvement of Inland Water Transport Service: Importance–Satisfaction Analysis Using Best–Worst Scaling

Priority attributes for the improvement of inland water transport (IWT) services are identified with reference to the twin cities of Kolkata and Howrah, India. The best–worst scaling (BWS) technique is used successfully for capturing perceived importance and satisfaction of commuters, and a hierarchical Bayesian multinomial logit (HB-MNL or HB for short) model is employed for estimating the corresponding utility scores. The rankings derived from HB analysis on importance and satisfaction differ, indicating the need for their joint consideration in prioritization. Accordingly, importance–satisfaction analysis combined with fuzzy c-means clustering is performed, followed by gap analysis, within the best–worst framework for systematic identification and ordering of priority attributes, by simultaneously accounting for both perceived importance and satisfaction of commuters. In addition, the segmentwise heterogeneity analysis clearly reveals similarities and differences in perceptions and priority requirements across various user groups defined by socioeconomic and trip characteristics. The emergence of safety and security as priority attributes, the predominance of qualitative attributes in the priority list, low perceived importance of fare, and variations in priorities across user segments constitute key meaningful observations from the study. These findings provide a basis for outlining necessary policy directives for improvement of inland water transport service in the study context.