Determinants of Thai Airways passenger trust: A structural equation model analysis

Abstract

The authors undertook a study to investigate how customer relationship management (CRM), perceived service quality (PSQ), perceived risk (PER), and passenger expectations (PE) affected Thai Airways passenger trust (PT).The research instrument developed for the survey consisted of a questionnaire which used a seven-level agreement scale for the seven-part, 39 survey items.The study conducted both a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a structural equation model (SEM) to analyze the 565 Thai Airways survey respondents' answers.A latent variable path analysis was performed using the LISREL 9.1 software program, with the model found to be consistent with empirical data.The causal factors in the model had both a positive and negative influence on the Thai Airways passenger trust, which can be explained 51% of the variance (R 2 ) in passenger trust (PT).The variables ranked in importance included perceived service quality (PSQ), customer relationship management (CRM), passenger expectations (PE), and perceived risk (PER), which had total values of 0.89, 0.76, 0.61 and -0.36, respectively.