4. Results
4.1. Respondents’ profiles
Respondents’ profiles are presented in Table 2. The majority of academic respondents (85.7%) had a Ph.D., while 14.3% had a Master degree. Assistant professor was the main job position (38.7%), followed by associate professor (32.8%), professor (17.6%) and lecturer (10.9%). Just over 40% of the employing firms of respondents in the ferry operator category had more than 50 employees, while 9.1% had fewer than 20 employees. Ferry governor respondents came from the Ministry of Transportation and Communication in Taiwan. Fifty percentage were a vice director or above, where 30% and 20% were senior specialists and traffic engineers, respectively. As for passenger respondents, 63.8% were aged 39 years or below, 20% were between 31 and 40, and 16.2% were 41 years old or above. Table 2 also shows that 35.7% of passenger respondents worked in private enterprises, 30.5% were soldiers, 19.0% were students, 8.1% were government servants, and 6.7% worked in other occupations.