Assessing the quality of urban services in informal settlements using the SERVQUAL model Case study: Informal settlements in Zanjan city

Abstract Today, the assessment of the urban services quality is one of the essential steps in developing quality improvement programs. Measurement of quality on a city scale, especially on the scale of deprived quarters, has a decisive role in explaining the distance and equity of resource allocation in geographic space. This paper aims to investigate the institutional and expected gap between the qualities of urban services in Zanjan informal settlements quarters with the SERVQUAL model. The research method is an analytical-comparative type with a practical nature in which data are collected by field-library (documentary) method. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software. Data analysis was performed using SERVQUAL model and Spearman, T-pair and Friedman statistical tests. The results of the study show that the level of perceived and expected gap in the quality of urban services is high in informal settlements quarters, and the SERVQUAL model criteria are mainly affecting each other and have a significant relationship among each other. Also, in the ranking of cognitive and anticipatory criteria, while there is a difference between the five SERVQUAL criteria, the confidence criterion has the first priority of the urban services quality in the studied quarters.