Evaluation the effect of mobile information services for public transportation through the empirical research on commuter trains

Abstract Railways play an important role in the way people move around their communities. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors which improve overall satisfaction with railway services in order to increase railway usage. This literature especially focuses on mobile information services on commuter trains. In this study we verified what kind of mobile information services passengers need while using railways, especially while on board, through two empirical surveys on commercial commuting trains. We provided not only rail information but also marketing-related information such as news, shop information, advertising and coupons for smartphones. Content server access logs were then obtained and analyzed, and several questionnaires were conducted in order to evaluate these information services during the test period. We used customer satisfaction (CS) portfolio analysis in order to clarify the relationship between satisfaction with each type of content and overall intent to use the mobile information services. Both times it was indicated that almost 90% of passengers who answered questionnaires would use these mobile information services if the services were actually introduced, and that satisfaction with railway information content was higher than that with marketing contents. From access logs to installed content servers on board, it was found that railway information is frequently accessed as well. In-station shops information and coupons were accessed as frequently as railway information. This result indicated that there were latent needs for these contents. This result was also drawn from CS portfolio analysis. These contents can be divided into the following types according to different points of view, location-based contents and non-location-based contents. We also found that the satisfaction with location-based information content affected overall intent of using these mobile information services. We also found that content that changes according to time received higher evaluation than other content. For the second surveys we built a system that can provide information on board connected with the internet. We found that over 60% of passengers who connected to the on-board network used the internet not only for on-board information services but also to browse other websites, using SNS and sending or receiving emails. Moreover, we investigated the relationship between the internet usage in this on-board mobile information service and overall intent to use this service. From this result, it was quantitatively found that offering an internet connection affected overall intent in using the on-board mobile information services.