Exploring the Effects of Car Ownership and Commuting on Subjective Well-Being: A Nationwide Questionnaire Study

Zuoxian Gan,Min Yang,Tao Feng

doi:10.3390/su11010084

Zuoxian Gan, Min Yang + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010084

Copy DOI

Abstract

How and to what extent household car ownership and commuting behavior affect individual subjective well-being (SWB) is of great interest for urban and transportation planning. Increasing attention has been paid to the associations between car ownership, commuting and SWB. However, only a limited number of studies examined the effects of travel-related factors on both cognitive and affective SWB aspects. This research empirically investigated the relationships from the two SWB aspects. Furthermore, we extend the modeling of generic cognitive SWB to several specific measures (e.g., satisfaction with life compared to a specific group of people, degree of free choice, social position, and social equality) to explore how car ownership and commuting behavior contribute to individual SWB. Drawing on the data derived from the 2014 China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey, a set of ordered probit models based on Bayesian inference are estimated. The findings point out that household car ownership has a significant effect on cognitive SWB but a limited influence on affective SWB. It appears that commuting time is significantly and negatively associated with individuals’ cognitive and affective well-being, whereas a positive correlation is found between the commuting by bicycle and affective SWB. The effects of commuting time and transportation modes on different measured satisfactions with life have no big differences. Finally, results of the Wald tests indicate that incorporating household car ownership and commuting behavior into the modeling framework can significantly improve the prediction accuracy of individual SWB.

Highlights

Considered as a more proper way of evaluating social progress and public policies than gross domestic product (GDP), well-being has been increasingly used as an alternative indicator in many practical applications such as politics, policy-making and consumption [1]
This study showed that linear and ordered fixed-effects models gave similar results in the relationship between subjective well-being (SWB) and commuting, while ordered models were more appropriate and recommended since they do not rely on the assumption that life satisfaction scores are cardinal, which is straightforward to implement in practice
Given that this study focuses on the relationship between travel behavior and individual SWB, we use commuting time, commuting modes and car ownership of household as independent variables, whilst controlling for individual and household socio-demographics, work status, health condition, spatial context, hukou

Summary

Introduction

Considered as a more proper way of evaluating social progress and public policies than gross domestic product (GDP), well-being has been increasingly used as an alternative indicator in many practical applications such as politics, policy-making and consumption [1]. The Bhutan government first put forward the phrase “gross national happiness (GNH)” in 1972 and declared that GNH is more important than GDP. On March 14th, 2018, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations (SDSN) launched the newest world happiness report. The original intention of this report is to prompt governments to pay special attention to the sustainable development of human beings and society rather than the blind pursuit of economic growth, whilst focusing on local residents’ satisfaction with life and livelihood related government policies. Ever more countries have considered well-being as an important indicator to enable policies that support better lives [3,4]

Methods

Results

Conclusion