Structural interrelationships of group service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intention for bus passengers

This study investigates the interrelationships of group-level service quality (GSQ), customer satisfaction (CS), and behavioral intentions (BI) for bus passengers in Taiwan through a hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) technique. Using the data in 1401 questionnaires collected from 35 jurisdictions in Taiwan, the results show that the proposed HLM model has a high degree of goodness of fit. In addition, both GSQ and CS can positively influence the bus passengers' BI. While CS mediates the effects of GSQ on BI, the positive influence of CS on BI can be negatively moderated by GSQ, i.e., moderated mediation effect. Discussion and suggestions are given in the end; the results have implications for allocating limited resources among different jurisdictions in Taiwan, i.e., retaining existing and possibly increasing new bus passengers.