Multi-criteria decision analysis towards robust service quality measurement

Importance: The role of airports is critical for a region in which it is viewed as an engine for the economic development. Facilities, infrastructure, information and in general the services offered by an airport represent the fuel for this engine. Evidently, customers and travelers expect standard-quality services that need to be framed and measured. Therefore, services in airports should be quantified and maintained, accordingly.

Objectives: This article reports a case study for evaluating quality of services offered by five main airports located in Spain. Quality of service was modelled based on a number of factors such as convenience, comfort, courtesy of staffs, information visibility, prices, security, and transportation facilities. The grey based multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was employed towards a reliable evaluation process by airport experts and to accommodate the several qualitative and conflicting evaluation factors with distinct definitions. To this end, Grey Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA-G) and grey Measurement of Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution (MARCOS-G) methods were applied for quantifying relative weights of decision factors and rating airports, respectively. Several sensitivity analysis, simulations, and comparisons were conducted for verifying the preciseness of the revealed results.

Findings: Research findings demonstrate that the proposed SWARA-G-MARCOS-G-based methodology (i) enables decision makers to express their preferences clearly; and (ii) attenuates the embedded subjectivity and uncertainty within the decision-making process. In addition, they revealed that access to the parking and Wi-Fi connection are amongst the critical factors in evaluating service quality of airport.

Contribution: This paper contributes to related literature in presenting a novel decision-making approach for measuring service quality of airports, validated via a real-case study. The employed interval and linguistic grey variables allow experts, in airport operations, to express their opinions with higher flexibility and comfortability. The presented model could be re-applied for other studies or practical cases as a user-friendly decision support system.