Airport quality and productivity changes: A Malmquist index decomposition assessment

•This paper analyses the productivity of 20 Italian airport management companies.•We directly assess the impact of quality of services on productive performance.•Italian airports have experienced a progressive decline in their productivities.•Decline in productivity can be attributed to a low level of quality of services.•They should invest more resources in an effort to reduce passenger waiting time.

This paper analyses the productivity of 20 Italian airports management companies during the period 2006–2008 using a DEA Malmquist index that includes a quality component. The proposed methodology is applied for the first time to the airport industry. In doing so, we directly assess the impact of the quality of services delivered by an airport on its productive performance. The study shows that, while Italian airports possess an acceptable level of quality in terms of their infrastructure, their managerial/administrative procedures must be strengthened in order to better deal with both technological modernization and passenger waiting time at the airports.