Passengers Perception on Safety Level of Ferry Transport: A Case Study in Labuan Island, Malaysia

Abstract

In order to attract more people to use water transport especially tourist, the effectual and well-organized water transportation safety are crucial to overcome any issue like overloaded passenger problem, confusing route to catch, uncomfortable seats, uncomfortable surrounding, the smell of smoke that affects the breathing and etcetera. Water transportation in Malaysia especially ferry, facing various challenges in giving the best quality required by passenger. The aim of this study is to identify the passenger perceptions toward safety level of ferry transportation services in Labuan Island, Malaysia. Quantitative method was mainly employed and a survey was conducted among the passengers who frequently used the ferries services as their transportation to arrive at their destinations which was selected by using simple random sampling with sample size of 690 passengers. Knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) concepts were used to measure the perception on safety. The results showed that the knowledge of the respondents on safety levels for express ferry, Ro- Ro ferry and speedboat are good while attitude of passengers is still need to be improved and the practices need to focus more. The express ferry has the highest frequency on safety level services as compared to RO-RO ferry and speedboat.