Exploring correlates of passenger satisfaction and service improvement priorities of the Shanghai-Nanjing High Speed Rail

Assessing passenger satisfaction is essential to enhancing loyalty and increasing ridership on high speed rail (HSR). Many studies explore passenger satisfaction with transit and conventional railway, but there are only a few that look at HSR. Although the HSR studies provide information on the relationship between service quality and passenger satisfaction, few identify the attributes that have the largest impact or improvement priorities for existing HSR. This study employs multivariate regression and importance-performance analysis to identify influential attributes and service improvement priorities for the Shanghai-Nanjing HSR. We found that the most important correlates of passenger satisfaction were staff attitudes, convenience of ticket purchase, and ease of the access trip. In general, passengers are satisfied with HSR services, especially with the attributes that are critical to overall HSR satisfaction. However, we found that improving toilet sanitation and seat comfort on the Shanghai-Nanjing HSR would increase passenger satisfaction.