Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Research in Transportation Business & Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rtbm Determinants of customer satisfaction with a true door-to-door DRT service in rural Germany Niklas Avermann a,c, ⁎⁎ , Jan Schlüter b,c, ⁎ a Chair of Statistics, Department of Economics, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Humboldtallee 3, 37073 Göttingen, Germany b Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Systems, Faculty of Physics, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany c Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Department of Dynamics of Complex Fluids, NGM, Am Fassberg 17, 37077 Göttingen, Germany ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Demand responsive transport DRT Public transport Mobility Rural areas ABSTRACT The effects of demographic change and the lack of acceptance represent some of the main problems for the public transport infrastructure in rural areas. As a consequence, the development of new transport service op- tions becomes especially relevant for rural communities. The Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self- OrganizationdevelopedanewformofDemandResponsiveTransporttheEcoBustoexaminetheviabilityofnew DRTsystemsinruralGermany.OurworkdrawsoncustomersatisfactiondataduringthetrialrunsoftheEcoBus. Based on the survey data, this paper develops regression models to explain the determinants of DRT customer satisfaction. Our main findings include the importance of waiting times and the ease of entry for overall cus- tomer satisfaction. Nevertheless, we found no evidence that the presence of other guests in the vehicle had any negative impact on customer satisfaction. Findings of other works that women are significantly more likely to use DRT services could not be validated from our data. 1. Introduction Theabilitytoleadanindependentandself-determinedlifeisoneof the most important and basic needs for people of all age groups. One aspect of this is the assurance of spatial mobility. Restriction of general mobility is often accompanied by a perceived loss in the quality of life, autonomy and freedom (Limbourg, 2015; Limbourg & Matern, 2009). Especially in rural areas, these demands represent an increased chal- lenge. Many rural areas are characterised by similar features. Often the distancestobecovered,forexampletomedicalappointments,schoolor work, are very long and public transport is often insufficiently devel- oped, so that the mobility demands of local residents cannot be ade- quately taken into account. Due to the low population density, tradi- tional scheduled transport is often underutilised. Frequently, many seats in the transport vehicles remain unused and entire lines are re- moved from the public transport offer, as it is not worthwhile for the transport providers to continue financing the service. Regularly, the transport providers are focused on school times, since relatively large capacity utilisation can be reached here. Outside these rush hours, however,frequencyofbussesinruralareasiscomparativelylow,aslow load factors or empty runs are more likely. The low frequency often leads to general dissatisfaction among citizens, for whom regular bus services are becoming less and less important, as they see no added value in their quality of life through the existing services. The need for flexible and low-cost mobility is therefore only insufficiently met by scheduled transport. A significant part of the population in rural areas therefore remains dependent on their cars. The operators of existing publictransportsystemsarethustaskedtocombinecostefficiencywith a satisfactory service concept for their customers. Given this back- ground Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) systems might be a valid possibility to provide rural areas with sufficient access to efficient public transport services. DRT systems are a mean of public transport that falls between private car usage and conventional public transport which aims at combining the benefits of busses and their higher occu- pancy rates with the greater comfort levels of taxi services (Bakker, 1999). Following the common definition, we define a DRT system as being publicly accessible to all groups and not focused on one special age group for example. Contrary to taxi services, fares are charged per customer and not per vehicle. Furthermore, the DRT system changes according to variations in demand and is provided by low capacity https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2019.100420 Received 7 June 2019; Received in revised form 16 December 2019; Accepted 16 December 2019 ⁎ Correspondance to: Jan Schlüter, NGM, Department of Dynamics of Complex Fluids, Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics andSelf-Organization, Am Fassberg 17, 37077 Göttingen, Germany ⁎⁎ Correspondance to: Niklas Avermann, Chair of Statistics, Department of Economics, Georg-August-University of Göttingen,Humboldtallee 3, 37073 Göttingen, Germany E-mail addresses: niklas.avermann@ds.mpg.de (N. Avermann), jan.schlueter@ds.mpg.de (J. Schlüter). Research in Transportation Business & Management xxx (xxxx) xxxx 2210-5395/ © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/). Please cite this article as: Niklas Avermann and Jan Schlüter, Research in Transportation Business & Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rtbm.2019.100420