Do contractual practices affect technical efficiency? Evidence from public transport operators in China

Different Effects of Contractual Form on Public Transport Satisfaction: Evidence from Large- and Medium-Sized Cities in China

“…However, production risk is not associated with passenger numbers, and instead refers to the risk related to the production cost to reach a fixed passenger number. According to the different proportions of revenue and production risks borne by each contracting party, and referring to the literature [4,5,40], the contractual forms of PT were divided into three kinds: the management contract, gross cost contract and net cost contract.…”

“…In recent years, reforms to public transport service systems have been launched to vigorously develop and support PT. The purpose of these reforms is to increase the number of people who take PT and improve the service quality of PT by changing the currently split model of PT (mainly including supervision mechanism and ownership structure) [4,5]. Nevertheless, in the first half of 2017, the ratio of public transport to private car trips in large-and medium-sized cities in China was generally lower than 40%, far below the ideal level of 60% [6].…”

“…In the public transport service system, most of the existing literature in this field has focused on the effects of the contractual form on the efficiency of PT from the operator's perspective. Results in the existing literature have shown that the correlation between efficiency and contractual forms is significant, that is, different contractual forms may incite different efficiencies [3][4][5][12][13][14][15]. So far, the literature [9] and [10] has only addressed the effects of the degree of supervision on the PT satisfaction from the public's perspective.…”

Assessing sustainability in cities. Role of integrated transport strategies

“…When the term refers to transit, efficiency measures should rate the processes by which transport services are produced, through the relationship of inputs to outputs . An assessment of the efficiency of transport services has been carried out in many studies, the most recent ones distinguish between economic and technical efficiency (Karlaftis and Tsamboulas 2012;Zhang, Juan, and Xiao 2015). In these studies, the economic efficiency is normally expressed by a cost-benefit ratio.…”

“…In this article, we could only analyze the technical efficiency, because of the difficulties on collecting annual data on operating costs and revenues. These difficulties seem to be generalized as data on technical efficiency is usually more reliable (Zhang, Juan, and Xiao 2015). In fact, many studies have focused their analysis on technical efficiency, conceptualizing it as a ratio between satisfied demand and supply implemented Karlaftis and Tsamboulas 2012).…”