E-Hailing Service Satisfaction: A Case Study of Students in a Higher Education Institution in Perlis, Malaysia

E-hailing is an online transportation administration recognised as the travellers’ top pick in the transportation industry, including collaboration among clients and service providers. As clients now are more informed and can decide to choose any service provider they prefer, the e-hailing companies are obligated to fulfil and offer better support to their numerous clients, particularly for e-hailing administration. Keeping up consumer loyalty is vital for e-hailing’s specialist organisations to support upper hands. This research aims to investigate the role of safety and security, price, convenience and accessibility and whether they affect e-hailing service satisfaction. This research adopted a quantitative research methodology using a survey approach. Data was collected from 276 e-hailing services customers from higher learning institutions using an online survey. Data were analysed using the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS), and a few analyses were carried out, such as descriptive analysis, correlations and regression analysis. The results have shown that all factors have somehow affected e-hailing service satisfaction. This result will provide understanding to ridesharing service providers and can be used to improve their services by looking at the most and least influencing customer satisfaction. In the future, researchers could include diverse variables to study the customer satisfaction of e-hailing services in Malaysia.


INTRODUCTION
The technological advancement in the modern age of globalisation has boosted social development and increased the quality of life (Lim et al., 2018). People are now starting to look at the new and newest trend to go about their everyday lives. Mobile technology's success has increased the need and demand for smartphones as they become convenient and connected worldwide. Most people have their own mobile devices that are also equipped with access to the Internet, allowing them to take advantage of various mobile applications. These mobile apps offered an avenue combining demand with supply accuracy, which is far more powerful and able to attract customers in using their services. Trendy changes have been taking place in the public transportation industry, particularly in the taxi industry in recent years in Malaysia. Our life is getting simpler with the advancement of mobile technology, and everything is at our fingertips. Transportation wise, the development of technology has changed customers' preferences to use e-hailing services over any other mode of transports. The introduction of mobile transportation apps has boosted demand for ride services like Uber and Grab and have transformed the taxi industry, increasing competition between local taxi and public transportation industries (Audenhove et al., 2020). Customers can download the Ride-Hailing software from iTunes or the Play Store. All users have to do when they have the application on their smartphone are registering themselves as an application user, requesting the services, and paying for the services.
Public transport is always important to people, especially those in the suburban area. The demand for public transport keeps increasing rapidly due to the demands of the residents in the area. Bus, taxi and electronic train services (ETS) are common public transport used by residents around Arau town, Perlis. Since this area is also lived by students studying in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Cawangan Perlis, Arau Campus, they also use these services, especially when going to nearby places, going back to their hometowns, buy groceries, food and others. An e-hailing service or ridesharing service is a service that uses a location sharing network to connect passengers with private drivers through websites and smartphone apps. Demand for e-hailing services has recently increased in Malaysia based on daily travel demands (Jais & Marzuki, 2020), with services available like MyCar, EzCab, MULA DACSEE, Riding Pink, and Grab is one of the pioneers in this market. Many studies uncover that e-hailing or ridesharing bids to the more youthful age given some appealing criteria this service offers such as less holding up time, highlight point administration, alleviation from stopping and drive under the influence burden. It expands portability choices for individuals staying in urban and suburban areas. Ridesharing is by all accounts integral to the public transportation framework (Dhawan & Yadav, 2018). The competitive environment in the transportation industry forced companies to look at crucial factors in their customers' management, such as managing the relationship between an organisation, its people and its customers over time. One of the crucial elements in customers' management is the customers' satisfaction. Understanding these problems could help e-hailing service providers in improving their services.
Over the past years, with the rise in e-hailing demand, especially among young adults, the e-hailing service provider found it crucial to understand how they could improve their services. There has been a report that customers faced several problems when using e-hailing services. Major alarms such as passenger safety and security, convenience, pricing and accessibility are determinants of passenger behaviour towards their ride intention (Teo et al., 2018). Complaints on e-hailing have been reported in many cases concerning safety issues such as driver abuse and violence, sexual harassment and assault, overloading of fares and mishaps due to transport accidents. There were also cases concerning sexual assault and robbery cases involving the drivers of e-hailing companies, as reported by The Star in March 2021. Despite these problems, the market for e-hailing continues to rise as people need to use e-hailing services. Thus, the security and safety factor should be one of the major concerns for e-hailing services providers. Another issue that is also becoming a concern to the passenger using e-hailing services is the surging price. Surge pricing is a pricing technique in the free market whereby fare prices increase or decrease depending on supply and demand. During peak hours, the fares can either double or triple depending on the need. In most cases, surge pricing catches customers off-guard, leaving them annoyed.
Understanding passenger behaviour towards ridesharing could assist policymakers in ensuring passenger safety and protection and fair pricing practices, which were the major problems facing ehailing companies (Teo et al., 2018). Concerned about these issues, this research aims to investigate the effects of safety and security, convenience, pricing and accessibility on e-hailing services satisfaction among students studying in UiTM Cawangan Perlis, Arau Campus. The factors were selected based on a study carried out by Teo et al. (2018).

LITERATURE REVIEW
The introduction of e-hailing companies has changed the scene of transportation administrations for the better lately. Drivers and travellers are presently associated through innovation, and the drivers are better educated concerning their travellers' fundamental foundation data and favoured objective. Albeit the presentation of e-hailing administrations has caused contention, the interest for e-hailing administrations continues to ascend as they have, in any case, end up being both conservative and reliable. Besides giving business openings, e-hailing administrations are also accessible in regions where public transportation is more uncommon, especially in suburban areas (Salim et al., 2020). The market of e-hailing services has become more competitive with more and more companies entering the market. To stay competitive, e-hailing companies must find ways to manage their customers and provide services that meet customers' expectations. Understanding the factors that influence customers satisfaction is becoming vital in the industry.

Customer Satisfaction
E-hailing services in Malaysia had aroused the industry's growth and are considered a complement to the existing public transportation system. Customers in this era have more information and choice to choose any facilities. The service provider needs to satisfy and provide better service to their many customers, especially for e-hailing service. According to Oliver (1999), customer satisfaction is a vital indicator of a company's past, current, and future performance. Hence, marketing experts and scholars have been critically focusing on this since long ago. Consumer satisfaction can be defined as how a user perceives a particular service or product as either satisfactory or dissatisfactory based on the expected standard or performance of that service or product (Kotler & Keller, 2006). Customers will be satisfied when their expectations meet or exceed the products or services purchased (Bismo, Sarjono, & Ferian, 2018: Nik Hashim et al., 2019' Hashim et al., 2020. Customer satisfaction can be defined as a customer's perception of the degree to which customers' requirements have been fulfilled, referring to the differences between expectations and actual performance (Hanif et al., 2010). Customer satisfaction refers to a consumer's comprehensive assessment of performance based on past experience with an organisation (Sanjuq, 2014). In the service industries, customer satisfaction is crucial as the means to measure service quality (Cameran et al., 2009;Ali & Raza, 2015). Therefore, service quality is expected to have a certain extent of influence on customer's satisfaction. The study on consumer satisfaction towards transportation services is also warranted to measure consumer satisfaction level towards the benefits provided by transportation services (Balachandan & Hamzah, 2017;Abdullah et al., 2020, Anuar et al., 2020.

Safety and Security
Safety is one of the essential things that customers consider while taking a taxi. Security inspection is an essential factor that can attract customers to take up e-hailing services. Rules and legislation are all ready to ensure that e-hailing service is assured of security. Before the drivers were provided with the license, they would first receive permission to sit for the driving test. The most important thing is that there is no criminal record, so the driver must confirm liability insurance with the certificate. According to Ngo (2015),' the type, model and condition of the vehicle, the actual pointto-point route followed by the car, the minimum fuel efficiency standard and data reporting, the car should not exceed five years. The monitoring and evaluation requirements were a few of the many conditions that the e-hailing registered vehicle has to meet.

Price
Price and benefits refer to prices that customers are willing to pay for specific goods or services based on their perception. Charged rates might vary from place to place. Taxi admission is regularly expensive against other e-hailing rides (Rempel, 2016). Gabel (2016) further stated that other e-hailing ride prices are less costly than taxi entry, given that the fee is higher during the periods of appeal. The higher cost will be uncovered in the e-hailing's application before requesting the pickups, and this will help the client decide whether to take the ride or use somethings else (Rempel, 2016). Since most ehailing rides provide cheaper rates as compared with taxi fares, it becomes an excellent consumer choice (Azmi et al., 2016).

Convenience
A product or service is considered convenient because it saves users' time. Convenience can also be characterised as the perceived time and energy needed to obtain a task objective. Consequently, consumers can choose their preferred e-hailing service based on their needs and wishes. Waiting time is another common explanation for the consumer's willingness to use the e-hailing service after the ease of payment, whereby the speed of travel and the distance between the current location of the car and the pickup place can affect the waiting time of the customer. Rayle et al. (2014) expressed the contrast between the waiting time and the hailing time for a taxi and the waiting time for an e-hailing ride because a taxi was taking longer than e-hailing. According to Rayle et al. (2014), as Huges and McKenzie (2015) referred, the most apparent cause for a customer to use e-hailing is the ease of payment and waiting time in second place. The Grab e-hailing service saves money and saves time, as mentioned by Caranza, Chow, Pham, Roswell and Sun (2016). The Grab e-hailing service allows customers to book a ride at any time, unlike public transport, such as a bus or train, which follows a set itinerary. Customers can shorten the time to walk to their destination as e-hailing service drop off their customers at the point of destination compared to public transportation methods.

Accessibility
Accessibility refers to the ease of reaching goods, services, destinations, and activities called opportunities together, which is the goal of most transport activity, except for the limited portion of travel where mobility is an end in itself (Litman, 2016). Individual characteristics quickly determine the level of transportation access for a person in terms of their needs, skills and opportunities. E-hailing service provides a wide variety of transport services and related payment methods through one mobile application. The e-hailing service conveys the current location of the requested e-hailing car. Customers can monitor the process from their mobile, avoid potential confusion than waiting for a traditional taxi.

Research Hypotheses
The following research hypotheses were developed after reviewing the conceptual and empirical perspectives from the literature as presented below.

Relationship Between Safety and Security and Customer Satisfaction
Safety and security indicate a positive relationship with customer satisfaction. According to Suhaimi et al. (2018), safety is a big concern when using e-hailing services, and those e-hailing providers are expected to enforce security policies, rules and regulations. A safety inspection is one of the most crucial factors that can attract customers to choose an e-hailing service. Rules and regulations are all set to ensure the safety of e-hailing customers where e-hailing drivers must fulfil several conditions, which include the vehicle types, model, and condition, the actual point-to-point route that the car follows, the minimum fuel efficiency standard and data reporting, the car should not exceed five years as well as the requirements for monitoring and evaluation (Ngo, 2015).
Based on the above evidence, Hypothesis 1 is developed as: H1: There is an effect of safety and security on e-hailing service satisfaction.

Relationship Between Price and Customer Satisfaction
According to Han et al. in Djumarno et al. (2018), price suitability can uphold consumer loyalty after accomplishing the ideal degree of client benefits that urges clients to trust and make rehash purchases. Good insight will prompt a sense of fulfilment with the client. Interestingly, alternately, assuming the client has a negative insight, there is a feeling of disappointment that makes clients hesitant to repurchase the item. Cost is a critical factor behind consumer loyalty and item dedication because a client cautiously sees if he is getting the most advantage from the item against his spending. Kotler and Amstrong in Friani et al. (2018) is "the amount of money exchanged for a product and service. Prices are some values that consumers exchange for the number of benefits by owning or using an item or service". The indicator used follows a suggestion by Kotler and Armstrong in Ismail et al. (2016) suggested that price is the amount of money charged for a product or a service; the sum of the values that customers exchange for the benefits of having or using a product or service. The price value and amount paid for the service or product significantly affect customer satisfaction with e-hailing service satisfaction.
Based on the above evidence, Hypothesis 2 is developed as: H2: There is an effect of price on e-hailing service satisfaction.

Relationship Between Convenience and Customer Satisfaction
The previous study by Suhaimi et al. (2018) supported that convenience affects customer satisfaction. When using an e-hailing service, the customer is satisfied with the convenience factor because it is easy to use and pay by credit card. There is a positive relationship between convenience customer satisfaction. According to Li, Hong, and Zhang (2016), e-hailing service can be a resolution to reduce the problem regarding traffic congestion in the city areas, and it also provides further proof. FiveThirtyEight is the source of a statistic retrieved from the taxi and limousine commission about analysing the number of pickups. Alley (2016) said that e-hailing could offer rides to troublesome places for the taxi to reach in light of the insights. E-hailing service can help travellers in the simple entry to the particular travel destination in urban territory. Azmi et al. (2016) highlighted that using Uber can reduce waiting time as the traveller's itinerary differs from bus and train schedules. Also, getting lost among the travellers can be avoided as the Uber drivers are from the local area and indirectly act as their travel guides.
Based on the above evidence, Hypothesis 3 is developed as: H3: There is an effect of convenience on e-hailing service satisfaction.

Relationship Between Accessibility and Customer Satisfaction
Accessibility has a crucial effect and relationship on customers' satisfaction. According to Geradin (2015), the advantages of the e-hailing application are that it is user-friendly and can transmit the current information regarding the location of the car requested and the capability to track its ongoing progress by using a smartphone. By requesting a ride using the e-hailing application, the passenger can monitor the progress of the e-hailing car via smartphone instead of waiting for a traditional taxi and wondering when it will reach the destination (Geradin, 2015). According to Woo and Bales (2016), Uber is the most popular rideshare application, and it assists both transportation and referral services. The customers must set their current location for the dispatcher to go to the pickup point. The location set can be accessed by customers and dispatchers and the expected time arrival at the stated location. It will be helpful for travellers as the apps can aid them to quickly request an Uber ride to pick them up at the exact location, and they do not have to walk out to hail a taxi or any other public transports.
Based on the above evidence, Hypothesis 4 is developed as: H4: There is an effect of accessibility on e-hailing service satisfaction. Figure 1 below depicted the relationships between variables used in this study and the hypotheses developed.

Figure 1: Relationships Between Independent and Dependent Variables
The discussion on the results of these hypotheses testing will be discussed in the latter part of this paper.

METHODOLOGY
In this study, a quantitative research approach was adopted to identify the factors that influence e-hailing service satisfaction among students in UiTM Arau Campus. A self-administrated questionnaire survey was used to gather the data regarding the e-hailing service available within the UiTM Arau Campus. The questionnaire consists of 6 sections: respondents' demographic profile, safety and security, price, convenience, accessibility, and customer satisfaction. Data were collected using an online survey distributed to students in UiTM Arau Campus with experience in using e-hailing services. This research adopted a convenience sampling technique as students help to forward the online survey form to their friends. From the survey carried out, 276 questionnaires were answered. Data were then analysed using SPSS, Version 25.0, to measure the correlation between variables and regression analysis.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
This study has answered all the research questions and research objectives of this study, whose primary focus was to examine the effect of safety and security, price, convenience, accessibility (independent variables) towards customer satisfaction (dependent variable). Two tests were carried out, which are the correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis, to determine the relationship between variables and also the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable. The results of the analysis are presented below.

Correlation Analysis
The Pearson Correlation was used in this study to indicate the direction strength and significance of the bivariate relationship among the variables. It is denoted by R-value and it is by design constrained as -1 < r < 1. A positive value means positive linear correlation in this analysis, while negative values indicate a negative linear correlation, and the value of 0 denoted no linear correlation. Moreover, the nearer the value to 1 or -1 will indicate the more robust the linear correlation. This analysis indicated the relationship between four independent variables: safety and security, price, convenience, and accessibility with the dependent variables, which are e-hailing service satisfaction. Table 1 below shows the strength of the relationship correlation between variables measured in this study.  Table 1 above shows the Pearson Correlation test results between the dependent variable, e-hailing service satisfaction and the independent variables: safety and security, price, convenience, and accessibility. The results were interpreted using the Pearson Correlation coefficient (r).
As can be seen, accessibility has the highest positive correlations and strong relationships with e-hailing service satisfaction (r=0.810, p<0.01). It is also shown in Table 1 that accessibility is statistically significantly related to the dependent variable, which p-value is (p<0.000). These findings are in line with similar studies on Grabcar in Thailand by Ackaradejruangsri (2015), which also found that major concerns among the passengers are perception, accessibility and technology adoption (Teo et al., 2018).
Next, the price is positively correlated with e-hailing service satisfaction and has a strong relationship with the dependent variable (r=0.719, p<0.01). This independent variable is also statistically significantly related to e-hailing service satisfaction, where the p-value is (p<0.000). These findings are aligned with research carried out by Pepić (2018), which stated that competitive price contributes to ehailing's success over taxi companies.
The third factor, safety and security, shows that these independent variables were significant and moderately correlated with e-hailing service satisfaction (r=0.650, p<0.01). Table 4 below shows a statistically significant relationship between safety and security and e-hailing service satisfaction when the p-value is (p<0.000). A study supports these findings carried out by Arumugam et al. (2020), which stated that consumers of e-hailing are concerned about their privacy threats and personal safety. In addition, e-hailing service providers are aware that safety is essential for the users, and consumer trust in the e-hailing service provider is influenced by safety and security provided by the company (Gefen et al., 2003).
The last factor contributing to this study is the convenience that shows significant and moderately positively correlated with e-hailing service satisfaction with the result (r=0.650, p<0.01). The results were statistically significant where the level of the p-value (p<0.000) is statistically significant to influence e-hailing service satisfaction in UiTM Arau Campus. This result is similar to several studies that reported that the number-one reason existing ride-hailing users choose it over other transport modes is convenience. It should give room to manoeuvre for ride-hailing platforms, as long as additional conveniences can be provided (Audenhove et al., 2020).

Multiple Regression Analysis
Regression analysis is used when one independent variable is hypothesised to affect one dependent variable. Regression analysis in this research was carried out to determine whether the four independent variables, safety and security, price, convenience, and accessibility, describe a significant effect on the dependent variable, e-hailing service satisfaction used by UiTM Arau Campus students. Multiple regression can determine the model fit results and the relative contribution for each of the total variances in this study.

Model Fit
As can be seen, R represents the value of the multiple correlation coefficient. In this model summary, the value of R is 0.850, which indicated that the results are good and acceptable. Then, based on the results above, the R Square value is 0.722, which means that 72% of the variance in the e-hailing service satisfaction can be explained by the four independent variables suggested in this study, namely safety and security, price, convenience and accessibility. Table 2 below presents the model summary for this study.

Statistical Analysis
In this study, the researcher used ANOVA to analyse the variance. ANOVA stands for Analysis of Variance, which is a technique to determine if statistically significant differences of means occur between two or more groups. Table 3 below presented the ANOVA analysis summary for this study. Based on the results from the analysis, the significant F-value shows that the independent variables are significant predictors toward dependent variables (F=179.358, p< 0.01).

Estimated Model Coefficient
The coefficient value represents the mean change of the dependent variable given a one-unit shift in an independent variable in this study. Table 4 below presents the coefficient value of the variables. Based on Table 4 above, the unstandardised coefficient for safety and security is 0.106, indicating that when one level of safety and security increases, the service satisfaction also increases with a level value of 0.106 represented by the equation Y= 0.106 x + C. In addition, the result for e-learning shows that a significant value of p = 0.037 indicated that this factor has a significant positive effect on the dependent variable, customer satisfaction.
The result for price shows that the unstandardised coefficient for the variable is 0.213. It indicates an increase of one level of the price. There is an increase in satisfaction with level value 0.213, which is represented by the equation Y = 0.213x + C. The result for price shows that the significant value of p= 0.000 indicated that the variable has a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction.
Next, the result of the unstandardised coefficient for convenience is 0.137, which indicated that convenience has a significant positive effect on the model. As one level of convenience increases, the level of satisfaction also increases, which is 0.137, represented by the equation: Y = 0.137x + C. From the result, convenience shows that the significant value of p = 0.001 indicates that this factor has a significant positive effect on satisfaction.
For the last independent variable which is accessibility, the result for unstandardised coefficients is 0.462 which indicated that the accessibility has a significant positive effect on the dependent variable as one level of accessibility increase, the level of satisfaction will also increase which by 0. From the analysis above, an equation below is developed to predict e-hailing service satisfaction.

Statistical Significant of Independent Variable
The best significant result is the result of the value of p < 0.01. As it can be seen, from the four factors of the e-hailing service satisfaction, three independent variables which are price (β = 0.233, p<0.000), accessibility (β = 0.492, p<0.000) and convenience (β = 0.144, p<0.0001), shows that they are very significantly related to the dependent variable. Only one independent variable, safety and security (β = 0.097, p<0.037), was less significantly related to the dependent variable.

Hypothesis Testing
The summary of hypotheses testing resulted from the multiple regression test can be seen in Table 5 below.

Safety and security
Hypothesis H1: (β = 0.097, p< 0.037) This finding shows that there is an effect of safety and security on e-hailing service satisfaction. Based on the regression analysis, e-learning has a significant positive effect on e-hailing service satisfaction, as the results showed (β = 0.097, p< 0.037). Therefore, the result for hypothesis H1 is supported thus accepted.

Price
Hypothesis H2: (β = 0.233, p<0.000) There is an effect of price on e-hailing service satisfaction. Based on the regression analysis, the price significantly affects e-hailing service satisfaction, as the results showed (β = 0.233, p<0.000). Therefore, the result for hypothesis H2 is supported thus accepted.

Convenience
Hypothesis H3: (β = 0.144, p< 0.001) This finding shows that there is an effect of convenience on e-hailing service satisfaction. Based on the regression analysis, convenience has a significant positive effect on e-hailing service satisfaction, as the results showed (β = 0.144, p< 0.001). Therefore, the result for hypothesis H3 is supported thus accepted.

Accessibility
Hypothesis H4: (β = 0.492, p< 0.000) There is an effect of accessibility on e-hailing service satisfaction. Based on the regression analysis, accessibility has a significant positive effect on e-hailing service satisfaction, as the results showed (β = 0.492, p< 0.000). Therefore, the result for hypothesis H4 is supported thus accepted.

LIMITATION OF STUDY AND RECOMMENDATION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
This study was carried out using a survey which respondents consist of students of the UiTM Cawangan Perlis staying in Arau Campus. UiTM students are considered as part of the main customers of e-hailing services in Arau town. However, the responses gathered from this survey were limited to the students only, thus reflected in the results of factors influencing the satisfaction of the e-hailing service in this study. Effective marketing practice identifies various consumer desires and designs the goods and services as appropriate. The fulfilment of consumer needs is the basis for customer loyalty and repeat buying thus leads to numerous factors that could influence customers satisfaction. This study only focuses on four factors that which are safety and security, convenience, pricing and accessibility affect the satisfaction of the e-hailing service among students. Future research could study other factors which can improve customer satisfaction with the use of e-hailing services.

CONCLUSIONS
This study was conducted to understand the effects of safety and security, price, convenience and accessibility on e-hailing service satisfaction. The findings in this study show that among all the factors, accessibility shows the highest effect on customers satisfaction, followed by price, convenience and lastly, safety and security. It is clearly shown that the accessibility to e-hailing services is very crucial to customers. It refers to the ease of getting the e-hailing services and reaching their destination. Accessibility plays a critical influence in customers' satisfaction because passengers will always tend to choose services that are easily accessible to reach their desired destination. Apart from accessibility, customers also feel that the price for the e-hailing services must be reasonable. Since this study was conducted among younger adults with less income, the price is a significant concern despite needing the e-hailing service. The other factor, convenience, also shows some effect on customer satisfaction but pointed to a very low effect. The results also show that the same low effect of safety and security factors on e-hailing service satisfaction.
In conclusion, customer satisfaction plays an essential role within a business. Not only is it the leading indicator to measure customer loyalty, identify unhappy customers, reduce churn and increase revenue; it is also a key point of differentiation that helps you to attract new customers in competitive business environments. As the e-hailing industry is becoming more competitive, e-hailing providers must consider how they can increase customers satisfaction, especially in a targeted area where most customers are younger adults. The results from this study have suggested many factors that e-hailing service providers could use to provide better services and improve customer satisfaction in using ehailing services in the future.