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Asia-Pacific Social Science Review

Abstract

Quality of life (QoL) has long been studied by researchers. As a part of the Malaysian government’s efforts to improve citizens’ QoL, in 2017, a new mass rapid transit (MRT) service was launched in Selangor. Although past studies support that access to public transportation service increases QoL, no study has directly examined the relationship between accessibility to the new MRT service and QoL. Thus, a cross-sectional study was designed to test the effects of perceived accessibility to the new MRT service and perceived safety on QoL. Two hundred and fourteen MRT users were recruited using convenience and online snowball sampling and were asked to report their accessibility to the MRT service, the safety of the neighborhood, and QoL. Hierarchical multiple regression showed that after controlling the demographic factors (age, gender, and income), perceived accessibility to the MRT service had a positive relationship with QoL. However, perceived safety had no relationship with QoL and did not moderate the relationship between perceived accessibility and QoL. Overall, the findings offer the first empirical evidence of the beneficial effect of the MRT service on QoL and highlight the necessity of developing public transportation services in Malaysia.

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