Travel satisfaction and travel well-being: Which is more related to travel choice behaviour in the post COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from public transport travellers in Xi’an, China

The spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has decreased the willingness to choose public transport where travellers are more likely to be infected due to intensive passenger flow, in which case it is hard to attract passenger volume if the subjective well-being of travellers is not improved. However, the traditional measurement of travel evaluation may be not applicable to the context of the pandemic and it is necessary to analyse the changes in the internal mechanisms of travel well-being to avoid the loss of passengers. Based on structural equation modelling, this paper explored the internal relationship between the constructs of travel well-being and emphasised the significance of taking psychological factors into consideration in the post COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that travel satisfaction with the anti-pandemic related service quality of public transport is related to overall travel well-being, which can be used as a key part of well-being measurement scale design in the future. The results also indicate that, due to negative mood on the affective level induced by COVID-19, travel satisfaction on the cognitive level is not directly but indirectly related to travel choice behaviour through overall travel well-being. Compared to travel satisfaction, travel well-being is more extensive and covers travel satisfaction to some extent. Therefore, instead of studying travel satisfaction simply, taking travel well-being as the dependent variable to identify shortages existing in public transport will provide a more accurate perspective for policymakers in the post COVID-19 pandemic.