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Research suggests that for many people happiness is being able to make the routines of everyday life work, such that positive feelings dominate over negative feelings resulting from daily hassles. In line with this, a survey of work commuters in the three largest urban areas of Sweden show that satisfaction with the work commute contributes to overall happiness. It is also found that feelings during the commutes are predominantly positive or neutral. Possible explanatory factors include desirable physical exercise from walking and biking, as well as that short commutes provide a buffer between the work and private spheres. For longer work commutes, social and entertainment activities either increase positive affects or counteract stress and boredom. Satisfaction with being employed in a recession may also spill over to positive experiences of work commutes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11205-012-0003-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The aim is to propose a theoretical grounding of soft transport policy measures to reduce car use. A general conceptual framework is first presented to clarify how hard and soft transport policy measures impact on car-use reduction. Two different behavioural theories that have been used to account for car use and car-use reduction are then integrated in a self-regulation theory that identifies three stages of the process of voluntarily changing car use, setting a car-use reduction goal, forming a plan for achieving the goal, and initiating and executing the plan. A number of techniques are described that facilitate the different stages of the process of car-use reduction.