Consumer Empowerment in Transportation Sector

Awareness of rights and obligations as a consumer became one of the problems faced by consumers. One way to increase consumer awareness is to provide access to consumer education through media used by consumers. This article aimed to identify and analyze the effect of socio-demographic characteristics and consumer education media toward consumer empowerment on public transportation. This research used a cross-sectional study through an online survey of 100 users of public transportation. Data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results showed that the consumer empowerment index is 44.56 and categorized as capable level. Also, female, early-aged adults (18 - 40 years), high education, employee, income range from IDR 2 000 000 to IDR 3 000 000 per capita per month, and an urban area were the most empowered consumers. In addition, employment status and media of consumer education positively and significantly influenced consumer empowerment. berkisar Rp2 000 000 hingga Rp3 000 000 per kapita per bulan, dan tinggal di area kota adalah konsumen yang paling berdaya. Status pekerjaan dan media dari edukasi konsumen berpengaruh secara positif signifikan terhadap keberdayaan konsumen.

Awareness of rights and obligations as a consumer became one of the problems faced by consumers. One way to increase consumer awareness is to provide access to consumer education through media used by consumers. This article aimed to identify and analyze the effect of socio-demographic characteristics and consumer education media toward consumer empowerment on public transportation. This research used a cross-sectional study through an online survey of 100 users of public transportation. Data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results showed that the consumer empowerment index is 44.56 and categorized as capable level. Also, female, early-aged adults (18 -40 years), high education, employee, income range from IDR 2 000 000 to IDR 3 000 000 per capita per month, and an urban area were the most empowered consumers. In addition, employment status and media of consumer education positively and significantly influenced consumer empowerment.

INTRODUCTION
Transportation is an essential service for consumers to support their needs in economic, social, and cultural aspects. As modern times progress, people turn to faster, more effective, and efficient public transportation services. Part of the transportation system that can support people's daily needs and cannot be separated from city development is public transportation (Widayanti et al., 2015). Public transportation is one of the core components to support sustainable growth in the centre of the city (Dahalan et al., 2015). Public transportation is divided into three types: land, sea and air transportations.
People usually use land transportation such as buses, trains or commuter lines, city transportation, taxis, even motorcycle taxis. Ships are used as marine transportation and aircraft as air transport.
Various incidents that violate consumer rights often happen in many sectors, from simple to complex cases (Safari & Simanjuntak, 2020). Awareness of rights and obligations as a consumer turns out to be one of the most frequent issues with consumers. According to Sumiyati and Fatmasari (2006), in general, consumer awareness about the rights and responsibilities of consumers is still relatively low. One of the consumers' rights under the Consumer Protection Act No.8 of 1999 Article 4 have pointed out that the consumer's right is ''the right to be heard of his opinions and his complaints on the goods and/or services used.'' Indonesia Consumers Foundation (YLKI) indicated that in 2013 the complaints are 934 cases. This number enlarged to 1192 cases in 2014 and decreased to 1030 cases by 2015. However, judging from the type of transportation commodity, the problem was 52 cases (5.05 percent). This has been increased from the previous year, which is 51 cases. Therefore, many consumers do not know their rights as consumers to assert complaints to the producers.
This shows the consumer complaints behavior is still tiny, caused by a lack of consumer knowledge of existing consumer protection institutions.
Consumers consider being empowered to determine the best price and quality, submit their complaints, and assert their rights (Nardo et al., 2011). Law No. 8/1999 on Consumer Protection Article 1 Point 1 stated that consumer protection is an effort that ensures legal certainty to protect consumers (Sakti et al., 2015). A way to increase consumer awareness is to provide access to consumer education.
Education enables consumers to function effectively and responsibly in an increasingly complex market (Mazlan et al., 2014). Consumer education becomes a key because of the complexity of the circulation of goods and services; hence, it is needed to strengthen consumers' capacity to build a powerful consumer (Simanjuntak, 2014).
There is only a small amount of research concerning consumer empowerment in public transportation held in Indonesia. The previous study regarding consumer empowerment is done in the packed food service field by Simanjuntak (2014), which stated that the empowered level in Bogor city and Bogor district is still low. Other earlier studies had specifically been conducted in the fields of food, telecommunications, education, electronic products, online purchases, the digital economy (Simanjuntak et al., 2013;Gazzola et al., 2017;Simanjuntak, 2018;Simanjuntak & Putri, 2018;Simanjuntak, 2019;Simanjuntak, 2020;Simanjuntak & Mubarokah, 2020;Simanjuntak & Umiyati, 2020;Simanjuntak & Putri, 2020). As explained before, research about consumer empowerment in the public transportation field is fascinating to do by researching social, economic, demographic, and consumer access to education on consumer empowerment in the public transportation field

METHODS
The research used the cross-sectional study design that is done in a certain period and not sustainable,

On Purchase
The question dimension in this stage is the selection of five domestic service preferences questions with three questions and 27 questions of usage behavior.

Post-Purchase
The dimension at this stage is the tendency to talk to 8 questions and the dimension of complaint behavior with 22 questions.

Data Collection Procedure
The online survey method was chosen to collect the data. Researchers spread links/links from google forms that contain questionnaires to the public.
The spread of the online questionnaire was done through groups in social media applications such as Line, Whatsapp, and Instagram, as well as through friends and relatives. Furthermore, respondents who are willing to fill in the questionnaire. The response most obtained by researchers to collect data was through Line and Whatsapp.

Data Analysis
The scale used for consumer empowerment variables is the scale with the answer choices, the one for ''exact'' scores and the zero scoring score for ''inappropriateness'', one rating score for ''know'' and zero scoring score for ''do not know'', score one for ''yes'' and a zero scoring for ''no'', as well as a score of one for ''local services'' and a zero scoring for ''non-local services''. In addition, the Likert Scale was used to measure the dimensions of questions that describe the intensity or frequency of the assessment scores one for the ''never'' answer option, the two scores for the ''sometimes'' three scorings for the ''often'' answers and the four rating scores for answer choices. Finally, the instrument had been tested for reliability and validity. Test reliability to test the instrument's consistency, while the validity test aimed to determine the accuracy of a research instrument. Descriptive analysis to describe the characteristics of respondents who studied with the distribution of each variable. Inferencing analysis to look at the

Consumer Education Media Access
Consumer education media access is a variation of media used to access consumer education.
Radio is a consumer education media access less desirable by respondents (4.0 percent) to gain access to consumer education. A total of 14 percent of respondents also get access to consumer education in addition to the media. Information that respondents got is through lecture materials on consumer education (Table 2).

Consumer Empowerment Pre Use of Services
Dimensions of information retrieval. Thus, the respondents are still categorized as low in having good behavior when purchasing public transportation services.

Consumer Post-Use Consumer Empowerment
The dimension of a tendency to talk. It is the consumer frequency in reminding others to be careful when using public transportation and telling a bad experience after using public transportation services. More respondents reminded others to look back before using public transportation (45.25 percent) than telling a bad experience (39.00 percent). The index score of this dimension is 43.62 out of 100. Therefore, respondents still tend to be passive to tell a bad experience to others. Based on Figure 2, the average female CEI score is higher than males. By age, the average score of CEI for early adults (18-40 years) is higher than the middle adult age group (41-59 years). This is in line with Yuliati and Anzola (2009) research that 20-40 years old were making more complaints than those 41-65 years old. Finally, based on education, the average of high educated CEI (> 12 years) is slightly higher than the level of education, which is only 12 years. Similarly, Simanjuntak and Yuliati (2015) found that the average of CEI was higher educated respondents greater than the level of education below.
Based on earnings, the highest average CEI scores were in groups with incomes in the range of IDR 2 000 000 -3 000 000. Based on employment status, the highest average CEI score of the respondents was the one who worked compared to the nonworking respondents. Based on the geographical location, the average scores of respondents in urban areas are higher than those in rural areas. According to Simanjuntak and Yuliati (2015), the category of CEI is aware, comprehend, capable, critical, and     (Simanjuntak et al., 2014a;Simanjuntak et al., 2014b). Consumer education content that needs to be promoted includes the introduction of consumer protection laws and institutions and the introduction of consumer rights and obligations (Simanjuntak & Mubarokah, 2020).