The New Norm, a reality or a fiction? A longitudinal passenger satisfaction study on the persisting effects of COVID-19

The concept of the "new norm" implies a shift in societal behavior, and the COVID-19 pandemic is suspected to have long-term effects on customer perceptions of public transportation service factors such as crowdedness and cleanliness as mentioned in the literature. To assess the existence of a new norm in passenger behavior, a six-wave longitudinal customer satisfaction survey was conducted, comprising four waves before the pandemic and two waves after, in addition to an interview panel survey. Employing the SEM-MGA approach, we modelled the longitudinal sample, utilizing a confirmatory factor analysis framework grounded in passenger satisfaction literature specific to the Tehran metro. A MGA model was introduced, and the Importance-Performance Analysis was employed to identify alterations in the significance and execution of satisfaction factors across each survey wave and model. Three main factors of cleanliness, crowdedness, ventilation, were examined to assess the new norm. Each factor consistently emerged as a significant factor in passenger satisfaction, pre and post-COVID-19. In conclusion, our findings indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic did not have an observable long-term impact on public transportation passengers' perceptions of cleanliness and ventilation. This suggests that authorities may consider returning to pre-pandemic operational practices to conserve valuable resources. Moreover, our study underscores passengers' adaptability and the system's reversion to pre-pandemic norms in this regard.