Modeling Satisfaction and Loyalty of Metro Commuters in Bengaluru, India Using SEM

The Bengaluru Metro, also known as Namma Metro, plays a crucial role in the transportation infrastructure of Bengaluru, India. The success and sustainability of the Bengaluru Metro significantly depend on its commuters’ satisfaction and loyalty. Therefore, integration of these two latent variables into the metro transportation system is crucial for enhancing ridership and ensuring that satisfied commuters become loyal advocates who actively promote metro transit. Nevertheless, there is a glaring deficiency of these satisfaction and loyalty models in the literature in the context of Indian metro systems, given the fact that most of the Indian metro systems are relatively new to the country’s transportation. This paucity of information has led this study to focus on assessing the satisfaction and loyalty intention of Bengaluru metro users by analyzing their perceptions of the service quality rendered in the metro by employing the structural equation modeling approach. Through a structured questionnaire, 700 metro users’ responses were collected by random sampling method. The findings extract four factors, such as Smooth Transition (ST), Amenities (AMT), Service Availability (SA), and Anxiety (ANX), with amenities and service availability being the most influential factor. Factor anxiety is having a detrimental impact on user satisfaction and loyalty. The developed model provides insight into the perception of metro users and provides useful information that can aid government institutions, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), and other transit agencies to postulate policies and implement strategies. This empirical relationship, based on various factors extracted, can be tested for other metro systems in India.