Does commuting matter to subjective well-being?

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: How and why commuting contributes to our well-being is of considerable importance for transportation policy and planning. This paper analyses the relation between commuting and subjective well-being by considering several cognitive (e.g., satisfaction with family life, leisure, income, work, health) and affective (e.g., happiness, anger, worry, sadness) components of subjective well-being. Fixed-effects models are estimated with German Socio-Economic Panel data for the period 2007 -2013. In contrast to previous papers in the literature, according to which commuting is bad for overall life satisfaction, we find no evidence that commuting in general is associated with a lower life satisfaction. Rather, it appears that longer commutes are only related to lower satisfaction with particular life domains, especially family life and leisure time. Time spent on housework, child care as well as physical and leisure activities mediate the association between commuting and well-being. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may IntroductionIn the past decades, subjective well-being has become an important component of the agenda of governments and measures of subjective well-being are often used to assess the costs and benefits of policies (e.g., Blanchflower and Oswald 2004, Dolan et al. 2008, ONS 2015. According to the World Happiness Report 2015 of the United Nations, happier and more satisfied people are more likely to be healthier, productive and pro-social, resulting in benefits for the society as a whole, i.e. higher economic productivity, stronger social insurance, greater societal resilience to natural hazards, and greater mutual care (Helliwell 2015). Therefore, most governments and international organisations regard subjective well- Thus, it is hardly surprising that subjectively experienced well-being has, especially recently, attracted more attention in transport and mobility studies, since transport is intricately linked to the well-being of the economy as well as communities and is seen as the blood of society (e.g., Banister et al. 2011, De Vos et al. 2013. In contemporary societies, the travel to work, in particular, plays a large role in the everyday life of individuals. With increasing suburban sprawl and subsequently longer commutes, the relationship between commuting and wellbeing is becoming a pressing concern (e.g., Pisarski 2006, Hilbrecht et al. 2014. This is compounded by the finding that commuting to work is found to be a stres...

How commuting affects subjective wellbeing

“…By contrast to Stutzer and Frey (2008), Lorenz (2018) found no association between commute distance and life satisfaction using the same data source and method but data for years 2007-2013. In the UK context, no association was found between commute time and life satisfaction in a fixed effects regression analysis of data from 1996 to 2008 for participants of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) (Dickerson et al 2014).…”

“…Cross-sectional studies have shown longer commute times associated with reduced happiness (Olsson et al 2013;Choi et al 2013;ONS 2014;Nie and Sousa-Poza 2018). However, Lorenz (2018) found no association between commute distance and frequency of feeling angry, worried, happy or sad (based on panel data and fixed effects models for workers in Germany). It is unclear whether these contrasting results might be explained by differences in exposure measures used (commute time versus distance) or differences in the data and type of analysis used (cross-sectional data/analysis versus longitudinal data/analysis).…”

“…A number of studies have found longer commute times to be associated with reduced satisfaction with leisure time (Dickerson et al 2014;Stutzer and Frey 2008). Lorenz's (2018) assessment of multiple life domains (based on GSOEP data for 2007-2013) found that longer commute distances have a negative association with satisfaction with leisure and family life. But no association was identified between commute distance and job satisfaction.…”

“…Note that, although our primary focus is on SWB, we have also considered a measure of mental health (GHQ-12) as this provides complementary insights (explained in the next section). Lorenz (2018) measures of SWB using panel data, but only considered the influence of commuting distance. Our study focusses on the effects of commuting time and mode, rather than distance.…”

Transportation Equity in China: Does Commuting Time Matter?

“…The impact of long commuting on the daily life of urban residents is becoming more and more obvious. Excessive commuting time can lead to physical and mental exhaustion [43,44], which can affect work efficiency and shorten the time for family life. Moreover, people of different social classes differ significantly in their modes of commuting and time spent commuting.…”