Explore the Impact of Travellers’ Perceived Importance on the Perception towards Urban Rail Transit Based on Structural Equation Model

Understanding the travel demand of travelers and their attitude helps to improve the level of service. Based on the data obtained from a self-administrated survey in May of 2019 in Xi’an, this study constructs latent variables to analyze the impact of perceived importance on the perception and attitude towards urban rail transit through the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. The main findings are that travelers’ perceived importance of convenience, time, and safety are significant and positively influence the evaluation on station service; but only perceived importance of time significantly and positively influence evaluation on accessibility. Higher evaluation on service of station or/and accessibility can significantly reflect the positive overall attitude towards urban rail transit; however, perceived importance cannot significantly influence the overall attitude. The results are helpful to improve the service of urban rail transit according to travelers’ demand.