Transport And Communications

Transport And Communications 2023, 11(1):23-37 | DOI: 10.26552/tac.C.2023.1.6

Modelling the Influence of Service Quality of Travel Mode on Tourism Satisfaction in Lagos State, Nigeria. A Tourist-Based Perception Study

Umar Obafemi Salisu¹, Samuel G. Odewumi², Forson Ibraheem Abdul-Azeez²

¹ Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Nigeria

² School of Transport and Logistics, Lagos State University, Ojo, +234, Nigeria

Tourism has remained a vital component of the economies of many major destination nations around the world due to its attributed benefits and opportunities, including economic diversification, improved quality of life, revenue generation, job creation, and sustainability of the ecosystem. Tourism can only achieve all these benefits with adequate provisioning and viable operations, maintenance, and management of transport systems. Unfortunately, the provision and operations of the transport system, especially travel modes for tourism activities in Lagos State, are faced with various challenges and externalities that consequently affect tourists’ experiences and intentions to recommend and revisit as well as overall tourism satisfaction. Meanwhile, there is a paucity of empirical studies on the quality of travel modes and tourism satisfactions in fast-growing cities, including Lagos, Nigeria. It is against this background that this study modeled the influence of service quality and travel modes on tourism satisfaction in Lagos State, Nigeria. This study is anchored on a cross-sectional survey research design, and a multistage sampling technique was used to administer 2,250 copies of a questionnaire to tourists across the study area. Both descriptive (frequency percentage table, weighted-mean index analysis) and inferential (binary logistic regression, BLR) statistics were used to achieve the data analysis. Major findings revealed that the majority of the respondents were male (above 60%), within the active age group of 18–53 years, and committed between 10% and 20% of their income to tourism annually. Most respondents spent most on transportation and equally rated transportation as the most complicated tourism component of their vacation in Lagos. Furthermore, findings revealed a poor rating of most of the service quality attributes of travel modes for tourism activities and aggregately rated three (reliability, trust, and empathy dimensions) out of the five evaluated dimensions as poor and unsatisfactory in meeting their expectations. However, despite the poor ratings for the service quality of travel modes, most (about 60%) are satisfied with the quality of tourism activities experienced in Lagos State. The result of the BLR model revealed that the service quality of travel modes statistically influences tourism satisfaction in Lagos State (χ2 = 586.893, p = 0.000 < 0.05). This study concludes that there is a need to improve the service quality of travel modes, especially public transport modes, and thus recommends the best strategies to improve the service quality of travel modes for tourism activities in Lagos State, Nigeria.

Keywords: Lagos State, Nigeria, service quality of travel mode, tourism activities, transport system, tourist satisfaction

JEL classification: R40, R49, Z30, Z32

Received: April 10, 2023; Revised: April 10, 2023; Accepted: June 16, 2023; Prepublished online: June 19, 2023; Published: June 21, 2023  Show citation