Experience or Memory: Happiness of Commuting
While happiness is recognized as a universal goal in life, the morning and evening commutes were found to be two of the three activities of the day that most often register negative emotions. Seeing the need to improve commuter happiness and satisfaction, the transportation research sector has developed a myriad of studies on happiness and commuting. The state of the art, while extensive, is lacking in detail in both the happiness definition depth and commuting experience richness. This research aims to provide a comprehensive examination of commuting happiness by differentiating commuting happiness into affective and cognitive components and then quantifying the contribution of socioeconomics and commuting experience variables through Structural Equation Models (SEMs). 2000 North Americans who commute for work or school were surveyed with Mechanical Turk. The results show most measures of commuting happiness and satisfaction to be heavily dependent on comfort and reliability ratings, particularly at the negative end of the spectrum. The commuting experience better explains cognitive happiness than affective happiness, and for both, the completeness of latest day’s models is truer to the actual experience than that of a typical day’s travel.
-
Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values.
-
Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Zhao, Jinhua
- Lee, Joanne
-
Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
- Date: 2013
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 20p
- Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Comfort; Commuters; Commuting; Emotions; Psychological aspects; Quality of life; Structural equation modeling; Travel behavior
- Geographic Terms: North America
- Subject Areas: Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01475409
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 13-1243
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Mar 14 2013 12:45PM