Development of a Type 2 Fuzzy Scale for Different Types of Urban Travelers and Their Concerns with Transit Usage

Abstract

The adoption of measurement scales for the assessment of transit service quality shapes the subjective evaluation of the system. However, the discrete nature of the Likert scale falls short in capturing the inherent vagueness of human perception and behavior. In contrast, the evolution of fuzzy set theory has overcome this limitation and demonstrated the utility of fuzzy scales in qualitative studies. The type 2 fuzzy scale, an advanced version of the type 1 fuzzy scale, effectively incorporates both vagueness and randomness and forms of uncertainty. The present study addresses the limitation of not involving travelers in constructing the measurement scale. Two Indian cities, each with distinct demographic, socioeconomic, and travel characteristics, were selected as study cities, and 434 samples were collected from different types of travelers. This study focuses on developing a scale for evaluating transit service quality, with the travelers’ trip characteristics captured through their frequency of transit use (users, infrequent users, and nonusers). Through hypothesis testing, the study identified statistically significant differences in the boundary values of linguistic terms and their membership functions across user groups. These findings confirm that the same linguistic label (e.g., “good”) may represent different perception levels for different user categories. The proposed fuzzy scale thus better accommodates variability in individuals’ perceptions. Additionally, the observed variation between the two cities highlights the influence of socioeconomic and demographic factors on how transit quality is perceived, reinforcing the need for localized calibration of measurement scales in service quality assessments.