چكيده به لاتين
In this current work, it is aimed to explore the impact of socio-economic characteristics of people, such as gender, age, income level, and educational attainment, their awareness and intentions on the weights assigned to different performance criteria based on people’s preferences. The public involvement technique namely survey is used to collect the data, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approach namely Group Analytical Hierarchy process (GAHP) as well as Technique for Order Preferences by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) are used to weight criteria and rank the alternative solutions respectively, while statistical analysis technique namely Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is used to determine the impact of socio-economic characteristics of people on the weights of performance criteria. Comparisons of outcomes are carried out across different cities in two nations: Iraq and Iran to identify any cross-country differences that may be explained by socio-economic variables. The impact of socio-economic characteristics of people and barriers related to different transportation attributes including safety and security, accessibility, reliability, comfort, and availability of public transportation system on their mode choice preferences is investigated. Subsequently, a 9-point Saaty’s scale is used to explore how people preferences toward different performance criteria including safety, travel time and reliability affect the weight determined through using the GAHP technique, and how these different weights affect the ranking of three different alternatives: metro, monorail, and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) obtained using the TOPSIS method. A comparison among four cities including Baghdad, Nineveh, and Karbala in Iraq, and Tehran in Iran is performed. The outcomes showed that people in the three Iraqi cities prioritize Safety, reliability, and travel time. Whereas, people in Tehran prioritize travel time, reliability and safety. Although the weights of criteria differed across the four cities, the ranking of the alternative solutions were the same; metro was the optimal solution, followed by monorail, and BRT. Results were validated using a stated preference survey in which the ranking of alternatives matched up to 83.3%. Then, the SEM analysis is performed to explore the impact of people’s socio-economic characteristics, as well as two latent variables including public awareness to the use of public transportation modes on congestion-level, pollution, and accidents rate, and public future intentions to use public transportation more often when safety, accessibility, and reliability levels enhanced (exogenous variables), in relation to weight they assign to performance criteria (endogenous variables). The results of the analysis showed a significant positive impact of the exogenous variables on the weight of criteria. In the four cities, public awareness and future intentions had positive impacts on the weights of criteria, with public awareness exerting a robust influence. In the cities of Baghdad and Nineveh, higher educational attainment and being a female had the highest impact of the weight assigned to the criteria followed by higher income and older-age, while in Karbala and Tehran, higher income level and being a female had the highest impact on the weights assigned to the criteria, followed by higher educational attainment and older age. Validation of the outcomes was performed using different goodness-of-fit indices, bootstrap sampling technique, and comparisons with the results obtained from the stated preference survey, which confirmed the findings.
