Evaluation of Community Cafe’s Utility for Public Transportation Use in a Local Community in Japan

Abstract

This study discusses the usefulness of a community cafe as a bus waiting place in local community, depopulated area in Japan. The idea is that passengers can wait comfortably for a bus at a community cafe even when financial constraints have caused the waiting time to increase as a result of reductions in transportation service frequency. To analyze the relationship between passenger’s satisfaction with bus transportation when a community cafe is used as a bus waiting place, a multiattribute utility function (MUF) and orthogonal arrays were used. The analysis shows that the utility function scores for factor combinations such as community cafe as a bus waiting place and either longer waiting time, or higher bus fare are higher than those for the combinations of canopied shelter with seats and either shorter waiting time or lower bus fare.