Using mixed methods to design service quality evaluation indicator system of railway container multimodal transport

Multimodal transport can bring the technical and economic advantages in different transportation modes into full play. While ensuring the level of service, it can reduce energy consumption and transport costs. Governments of most countries are actively promoting it. Therefore, it has become a research hot spot. Being a green, fast, and all-day transport mode, railways play an important role in multimodal transport. This article aims to analyze a multimodal transport service quality indicator system involving railways from the perspectives of customers, multimodal service providers, and governments. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were adopted to analyze the secondhand data of academic papers, government policy, and industry reports to clarify the quality characteristics of multimodal transport services. Using grounded theory and to analyze firsthand data from in-depth interviews with multimodal transport practitioners, 25 evaluation indicators of container multimodal transport service quality were chosen to be the evaluation index system. To test and improve the evaluation scale, 270 valid questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS 24.0 and AMOS 21.0 software, including reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis. The results show that all the indicators meet the standard requirements and have good reliability and validity.