Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of automation attributes in railway digital ticket payment toward the commuters' satisfaction and retention in railway transportation. Digital payment security is one of the essential qualities which was little discussed in determining public transportation service performance. This study used the partial least square structural equation modeling method study to measure the six effects indicated by the proposed research framework to fill the last research gap. The results showed two automation attributes, reliability and security, significantly influenced commuter satisfaction, supporting the behavioral theory as commuter satisfaction also substantially affected the commuters' retention attitude. This study revealed that the reliability factor was the most significant. The findings communicate important insight for local government in improving its railway transportation's quality of service. The study's scope was to train commuters who live in Jakarta metropolitan area and use the railway as their public or mass transportation.
TopIntroduction
In this globalization era, which is marked by the rapid development of digital technology and society, the demand for excellent and comfortable public transportation becomes one of the problems that must be addressed immediately (Coyle et al., 2011), especially for developing countries like Indonesia, a rapid population explosion. Public transit is meaningful because it can help the community's mobility. Besides the public transportation should be more affordable and accessible to almost all routes (Ilahi et al., 2015). The existence of public transport also has a good impact on the overall value of mass transportation. The number of people transported by public transport is growing more than private vehicles so that it can reduce congestion in the highways.
Indonesia can be categorized as a developing country with a relatively high population explosion, especially in urban areas like Jakarta. Moreover, due to Jakarta's high population and high mobility, traffic congestion becomes a problem that the local government cannot solve. Therefore, optimizing the role of public transportation in Indonesia, especially Jakarta, would be something necessary to do. To address transportation problems in Jakarta, the government has been providing various public transportation services such as TransJakarta buses, Moda Raya Terpadu (MRT) subway, Lintas Rel Terpadu (LRT) railway, and the older Commuter Line railway (Statistics Indonesia DKI Jakarta Province, 2018). Among those several public transportations, rail transportation seems to be the most popular and common transportation mode used by Jakarta metropolitan area citizens.
Although such public transport facilities have been provided by the government, in terms of public transport, especially in Jakarta, many citizens still choose not to use this kind of public facilities. People decide not to use public transportation for several different reasons. Primarily because of the convenience factor, which is expected because many people need to use public transit. According to Gustina (2016), other influencing factors were the conditions and tamped capacity, as well as the time spent waiting, making people reluctant to use public transportation. In responding to this problem, the use of advanced digital technology in public transportation might be one of the best solutions to improve the service quality and people's willingness to use public transport.
In some urban areas in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta, digital technology development is rapidly growing. Hence, as it seems almost impossible to include digital technology in the transportation sector, it is hoped that this could fulfill the people's desire to have better service than public transportation itself. However, new digital technology may affect worrisome citizens because of a lack of trust in the security issues of using the latest digital technology, which may impact customer satisfaction as well (Chang & Chen, 2009).
This study will examine further a new research model as proposed by Ong et al. (2015) and Chang & Chen (2009). The use of new digital technology in railway transportation can be in digital payment service automation, consisting of four attributes: reliability, convenience, customization, and security. These attributes help to increase commuter satisfaction and indirectly affect their retention to use more rail transportation mode. This study examined commuters' behavior using the advanced technology of digital payments, such as various kinds of debit cards issued by banks and railway providers, which were introduced to replace the old ways of purchasing tickets digitally.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Security: The extent to which the potential customers or users believe that the product or mainly the business's service is secure from any potential fraud and/or loss for them to be used.
Service Automation: An advanced digital technology system (usually involves several software, as well as hardware integration) that can do repetitive efficient tasks on services, thereby reducing the role of humans in it.
Customer Satisfaction: An emotional response by customers that results from a cognitive process of evaluating the service received from the sellers against the cost of obtaining that service.
Customization: An ability of a business provider company to provide services or products that are appropriate and can meet the diverse needs of customers, which are unique and giving personalized experience for customers.
Customer Retention: An effort by marketers to return or continuous interact or exchange the customer value to maintain customer loyalty and relationship ongoing basis.
Reliability: In a public service system, it refers to how a company or service provider can perform and complete the promise they offer from their service.