An Expert Study on the Significance of Passenger Transport Characteristics in Choosing a Mode of Travel, Using Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods

Passengers choose a mode of public transport from the available options based on characteristics that are important to them. The importance of these characteristics has received little research attention and varies. This study presents 10 characteristics of passenger transport, the significance of which was examined using four MCDM (multi-criteria decision-making) methods. The questionnaire was conducted and 27 specialists (experts) in road, rail and air transport rated the importance of various characteristics (criteria) using rankings, percentage weights and intensity of importance values derived from pairwise criterion comparisons using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results of the study show that the opinions of the expert panel, expressed as ratings, were consistent, as the Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (0.64) was 9.2 times greater than its minimum threshold value of 0.07. The ranks of the criteria were used to calculate their relative weights using the ARTIW-L (average rank transformation into weight–linear) and ARTIW-N (non-linear) methods. The relative weights were calculated from the criteria percentage weights using the DPW (direct percentage weight) method. The consistency ratios of all 27 matrices calculated using the AHP method were less than 0.1. This demonstrates their consistency. The average calculated for each criterion using the four MCDM methods is the final measure of the significance of the passenger transport characteristic. For experts, the most important factors were safety (0.2234), travel costs (0.1488), travel time (0.1465), and comfort (0.1181). Factors of moderate importance included door-to-door delivery (0.0847), environmental friendliness (0.0685), and vehicle capacity (0.0597). The following factors were deemed the least important: service quality (0.0571), the impact of weather conditions (0.0532) and the risk of contracting COVID-19 (0.0400). The most important criterion was 5.6 times more significant than the least important criterion. This data will be used to carry out a thorough evaluation of the different transport options and select the most suitable one for intercity passenger transport.