Life-oriented Approach Research Articles

Factors Contributing to Well-Being in Japanese Community-Dwelling Older Adults Who Experienced Spousal Bereavement.

Providing support for older adults after spousal bereavement is crucial for psychological recovery through the grieving process and for promoting a healthy and happy remainder of life. The current study aimed to understand factors influencing well-being among Japanese community-dwelling older adults who experienced spousal bereavement by evaluating how their roles and activities affected their psychological well-being following the loss. We conducted a cross-sectional, anonymous, self-administered questionnaire survey of 332 older adults who had experienced death of a spouse in later adulthood. Identified factors that affected well-being after spousal loss were sex, ability to go out without assistance from others, long duration since spousal loss, having a hobby, and adopting a life-oriented approach to cope with bereavement. Well-being following spousal loss was influenced by participants' activities and roles. Findings of the current study provide potentially valuable suggestions for surviving spouses and their supporters when coping with grief following spousal loss. [Research in Gerontological Nursing, 17(3), 121-130.].

The role of attitudinal features on shared autonomous vehicles

The study aims at uncovering the effects of attitudinal features on Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAVs) adoption from a systematic and comprehensive perspective. Specifically, the technology acceptance model (TAM) was employed to systematically propose three key factors, i.e., green perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and behavioral intention. The life-oriented approach (LOA) was employed to extend TAM comprehensively by identifying three determinants, i.e., relative advantage, environmental awareness, and perceived risk. The study established correlations between behavioral intention and five attitudinal variables. The structural equation model (SEM) was applied to interpret the effects of these determinants on SAVs adoption. The study conducted a survey in Nanjing, China, from May to June 2020, with 627 valid respondents, to validate the results. Results indicate the significant effects of attitudinal features on SAVs adoption. SAVs adoption is related positively to relative advantage (0.47), environmental awareness (0.22), green perceived usefulness (0.29), and perceived ease of use (0.16). Perceived risk (−0.33) negatively affects SAVs adoption. These findings provide implications for improving SAVs adoption and suggestions for future research by emphasizing the importance of attitudinal features.

People\u2019s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic during its early stages and factors affecting those responses

The world has suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is expected that societies will learn lessons from this experience, knowledge about how people responded to the pandemic in its early stages is very limited. With the aim of urgently providing policymakers with scientific evidence about how to better inform the public about fighting against COVID-19, this study made an initial attempt to assess how people responded to the COVID-19 outbreak during its early stages. Based on a life-oriented approach, this study collected data on a large set of behaviors and attitudes through a nationwide retrospective panel survey conducted in Japan at the end of March 2020, when the country had 1953 confirmed infection cases in total. Valid data were collected from 1052 residents from the whole of Japan, taking into account a balanced population distribution in terms of age, gender, and region. Respondents were asked to report changes in their daily activity-travel behavior, long-distance trips, and other life activities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated factors (information reliability, risk perception, attitudes about policy-making and communications with the public, etc.). Results of both aggregate and modeling analyses (using a structural equation model and a data mining approach) indicate that poor communication with the public may have been closely related to the spread of COVID-19 in Japan, and that effective interventions should be made by focusing on interactions between target persons and close members of their social networks. It is also revealed that differentiated communications are necessary to encourage different types of behavioral changes. Risk communication should be better designed to encourage people to voluntarily modify their needs in life [L] and perform the needed activities [A] at places with sufficient spaces [S] and proper duration of time and at the proper timing [TING]. Such a LASTING approach may be crucial to enhance the effects of massive public involvement in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. The findings from this study are not only useful to tackle the current pandemic, but also have a long-term value for addressing future pandemics.

Young people’s travel behavior – Using the life-oriented approach to understand the acceptance of autonomous driving

The self-driving public bus (SDPB) holds the potential to replace human-operated driving with more eco-friendly means and is therefore a valuable mobility solution for our future. The SDPB is based on the innovative technology of autonomous driving, which can only be guaranteed future market success with broad enough user acceptance. This acceptance is thus an essential factor for the growth of SDPB services. In this context, the travel behavior of young people is particularly interesting, as its development will continually demonstrate future mobility behavior trends. However, little research has been conducted regarding the best methods for motivating young people to accept SDPBs as a viable mode of travel.To address this topic, we first conducted a literature review, identifying factors that potentially influence SDPB acceptance. Subsequently, we developed a comprehensive research model based on the life-oriented approach and the technology acceptance model. This conceptualization was validated by a survey of 268 SDPB riders in real-world traffic. The results reveal several novel factors influencing the acceptance of SDPBs, in particular regarding differences in age. Our research contributes to existing research on both the life-oriented and travel behavior approaches by highlighting age differences and their importance in the field. For instance, our findings demonstrate a vital need to account for age differences when deriving policy implications for future mobility solutions.

Use of smartphone applications and its impacts on urban life: A survey and random forest analysis in Japan

This study investigates how various smartphone applications are used, and how that use leads to changes in various aspects of urban life. Different types of applications and the scope of their impacts on urban life are captured based on a life-oriented approach. Data were collected via an online survey of 1000 residents living in different cities of Japan in December 2017. It was found that 75.1% of respondents owned a smartphone and used 3.5 applications on average. Among the users of smartphone application(s), 45.4% experienced at least one life change. Applying a random forest approach, this study examined the relative influence of application usage on urban life as compared to built-environment, individual, and household attributes, as well as interdependencies across life changes, by building 37 forests with 37000 trees. It was revealed that applications of “game”, “photo, video”, “utility, tool, efficiency”, “shopping”, “healthcare, sports, beauty”, “touring”, “education”, “book, comic”, and “navigation, and map” induce changes in work, study, daily trip making, talks between family members, time use, sleeping, expenditure, physical exercise, and shopping in a complicated manner, even though the built environment attributes are the most important predictors to the life changes as a whole.

Impacts of Leisure and Tourism on the Elderly’s Quality of Life in Intimacy: A Comparative Study in Japan

Highly social activities like leisure and tourism are considered to have positive effects on the elderly’s mental health. Taking Japan as a case study, this research aims to clarify how leisure and tourism contribute to the elderly’s quality of life (QOL) in the domains of leisure and intimacy by comparing populated and depopulated areas. Such research has strong implications for achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through healthy aging, but relevant efforts are quite limited. In this study, leisure and tourism behaviors are captured by visit frequency, travel party and expenditure. Quality of life is measured by happiness and life satisfaction in different life domains, in line with the life-oriented approach. Data were collected in 2014 via a nationwide online survey in Japan. Applying a structural equation model (SEM) approach, it is found that leisure behavior contributes to maintaining the elderly’s QOL in leisure life and intimacy domains. Tourism behavior only contributes to QOL in populated areas. Leisure activities strongly enhance QOL in terms of intimacy and improve the neighborhood relationship of the elderly in depopulated areas and family life in populated areas. Enriching daily leisure activities for the elderly would improve their intimate relationships in depopulated areas.

Cross-border residential mobility, quality of life and modal shift: A Luxembourg case study

It is argued in the life-oriented approach that travel behavior affects life choice and vice versa with resulting impacts on quality of life (QOL). By deepening the analysis of interdependences between daily mobility and life event (relocation) and their relationships with QOL, this article focuses on two challenges. It aims at analyzing how these life events first, encourage travel behavior changes, especially mode choice, and second, improve or decrease people’s QOL. By radically changing living context and built environment, relocation also affects routine and satisfaction. These relationships are investigated in the Luxembourg cross-border area, where great differences related to real estate price encourage residential moves from Luxembourg to neighboring countries, while the general decline in public transport efficiency at the border may support car use. We use both mixed and ordered logit models. The first one investigates whether individuals’ life-stage changes and residential relocation are significant regarding their mode choice decision. The second estimates individuals’ global QOL and the roles of complementary factors (changing housing conditions, built environment, subjective satisfaction, travel time and socio-economic characteristics). The analysis reveals several results. The effect of the different factors is consistent with travel mode choice literature despite the specific cross-border context. Nevertheless, relocation, mainly oriented towards a cross-border suburbanization, significantly increases the probability of using the car for daily activities. These trips and especially the journeys to work are the least satisfactory aspects of daily life after relocation but does not affect the general level of QOL. At the opposite, the better housing conditions after relocation have positive effect on the QOL. From a policy perspective, this life-oriented approach in cross-border context confirms the influence of life events on QOL while it demonstrates a higher importance of housing conditions than spatial constraints on relocation and satisfaction.

Dynamic analysis of holiday travel behaviour with integrated multimodal travel information usage: A life-oriented approach

The Integrated Multimodal Travel Information (IMTI) plays an important role in the evolution process of holiday travel behaviour, which is seldom investigated. To fill this gap, this study analyses holiday travel behaviour dynamics with IMTI usage, based on the life-oriented approach. IMTI usage is taken as a separate life domain in this study, and a two-way relationship between holiday travel biography and IMTI usage biography over the life course, is examined after controlling for the effects of residential, household structure, employment/education, and car ownership biographies. Based on the web-based life history survey data, statistical characteristics of mobilities in each life biography are first analysed. Then, different random-effects ordered logistic models are established to investigate the biographical interdependencies from three aspects: intra-domain interdependency, inter-domain interdependency and outer-domain interdependency. The results show that the life biography is not only affected by a personal life course, but also affected by external background of the times. Under the interaction of inner individual factors and outer environment factors, there is an obvious dynamic two-way relationship between holiday travel biography and IMTI usage biography. Meanwhile, residential, household structure, employment/education and car ownership biographies have significant effects on these two life biographies. Especially, the influence of long-term state dependence for different life domains, over the life course, is much more obvious when explaining holiday travel behaviour dynamics and IMTI usage mobilities. Therefore, the life-oriented approach provides a valid method for analysing the dynamics of holiday travel behaviour with IMTI usage.

Experiences of past school travel modes by university students and their intention of future car purchase

We studied the relationship between experiences of past school travel-mode choice by university students and their intention to purchase a car in future by using the life-oriented approach. We conducted a retrospective questionnaire survey whose respondents were university students of two universities located in the center of the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (TMA), two in the suburbs of the TMA, and three in major local cities outside of it. We asked them to consider their experience of past travel mode for going to upper-level elementary, middle, and high school as well as general-purpose travels from their mobility biography. We also asked about possible factors affecting their future intentions, such as their degree of concern about the environmental damage that car use might entail and their daily use of information and communication technology (ICT) tools. Responses from 351 university students were successfully collected. We found that experience of past bicycle use for going to high school affected the intention of future car purchase positively, while rail use for attending high school showed a statistically significant negative correlation. We also modeled the degree of young university students’ intention to purchase a car in future by estimating ordered probit model. As a result, we found that experiences of past school travel by bicycle as high school students showed a positive relation, and of general-purpose travel by rail showed negative relation to intentions of purchasing a car in future. The latter implies that the policy measures for promoting a less car-dependent lifestyle by locating schools in the areas that are easily accessible by rail and conducting mobility management programs for molding school students’ experiences of rail travel.

The dynamics of commuting over the life course: Swiss experiences

Daily travel behavior, and especially commuting behavior, is strongly determined by the location of the places of residence, education and employment. After changes in these spatial choices, people inevitably show a travel behavior that is different from the travel behavior before these relocations occurred. Therefore, spatial alterations provide interesting starting points for policies and other interventions aiming at travel behavior change, as habits and routines are broken or at least weakened, and individuals reconsider their behavior and consciously reflect their decisions.The life-oriented approach is utilized in order to examine the interrelationships of various life choices with respect to the development of the commuting behavior over time and over people’s life courses. These analyses require corresponding longitudinal data, which was collected in the Zurich region, Switzerland, in a retrospective survey covering the 20year period from 1985 to 2004.The results show that the different dimensions of the life course are highly interdependent. The changes in residence, education and employment are to a great extent related to one another, occurring simultaneously rather than successively. A strong connection is also observed between the ownership of mobility tools and their usage for commuting. This applies likewise to changes in occupation (encompassing both education and employment) and the most frequently used mode of transport for the commuting trips. Following a residential relocation, the mean distances to the places of occupation decline, indicating that moving is used as a mean to reduce commuting. In contrast, changes in education and employment lead to considerably longer commuting distances. Interestingly, persons altering their places of residence and occupation simultaneously have even lengthier commutes. The ownership of both cars and public transport tickets rises after all changes. Concurrent with this increase in mobility tool availability, the corresponding usage for commuting also expands overall. Private and public transport are in general more frequently used, while cycling and walking decline.

Longitudinal Vehicle Transaction Model: Assessment of Lead and Lagged Effects of Longer-Term Changes and Life-Cycle Events

This paper presents a dynamic vehicle transaction model developed with data from a retrospective survey conducted in Halifax, Canada. The study investigated four types of vehicle transaction decisions, including first-time vehicle purchase, vehicle acquisition, vehicle disposal, and vehicle trade. A panel-based latent segment logit (PLSL) model was developed to account for repeated transaction decisions and to capture unobserved heterogeneity among the sample households. The study took a life-oriented approach by examining the lead and lagged effects of longer-term changes and life-cycle events. The PLSL model was estimated for two latent segments, and the model results suggest that profound heterogeneity exists, as evident in parametric values of the two segments. The life-cycle event represented by the birth of a child might trigger vehicle acquisition in Segment 1. In contrast, that life-cycle event might deter an acquisition decision in Segment 2. The model confirmed historical deposition effects of key life events. For instance, a 2-year lagged effect on vehicle acquisition was seen with the birth of a child. Moreover, the model results revealed that first-time vehicle purchase behavior was considerably different from the decision to acquire a vehicle. For example, for the longer-term change represented by the addition of a job, significant heterogeneity across the two segments for a first-time vehicle purchase decision was seen and a 3-year lagged effect was confirmed. A positive relationship for the decision to acquire a vehicle in both segments was found for the same variable, and a 1-year lagged effect was confirmed. Finally, the study provided important behavioral insights for targeting specific groups of the population to promote sustainable travel behavior.

Life-Oriented Approach of Modeling Commute Mode Loyalty and Transition Behavior

This study developed a dynamic model for individuals’ commute mode choice over their lifetime by using retrospective survey data. The study conceptualized that individuals reassessed their choice of commute mode when they relocated to a new residential location. Following the re-appraisal, people either continued using the same mode, which was considered mode loyalty, or made a transition to a new mode, which was considered mode transition in this study. The study developed a panel-based random-parameters logit model. One key feature of this study is a life-oriented approach to accommodate the effects of life-cycle events, longer-term changes, life-oriented sociodemographic transitions, and accessibility transitions. The model results suggest that the high-income group tends to be car loyal. No car ownership over the lifetime and the addition of a job increase the probability of transit loyalty. Individuals with no children in the household and residing in an area with high walk and bike usage have a higher probability to be loyal to active transportation. A decrease in household income and tenure transition from owned to rental are likely to trigger a transition from car to transit. However, the presence of children and the addition of a car increase the transition propensity from transit to car. The model results suggest that the use of life-oriented characteristics to explain longer-term commute mode loyalty and transition behavior provides important behavioral insights into the dynamics of individuals’ travel behavior over their lifetime.

Effects of land use and transport on young adults’ quality of life

In Japan, more than half of the population is concentrated in three major metropolitan areas: Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka, which have long attracted massive out-migration of young adults. The quality of life (QOL) of young adults in these major metropolises may be different from that of young adults in other cities. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of land use and transport on young adults’ QOL, by reflecting the influences of life choices in different domains, based on the life-oriented approach. Conceptually, QOL contains both personal and interpersonal components, where the former is a reflection of basic life needs embodied in health, job, residence and finance life domains and the latter expresses higher-ordered life needs embodied in social, leisure and recreation, education and learning, and family life domains. Using data collected from 539 young adults in Japanese cities in 2010 to estimate a structural equation model, it is found that young adults prefer to live in cities with compact, mixed and transit-oriented land use patterns. In addition, the young adults residing in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka are more satisfied with their life and are happier than those in other areas. Furthermore, young adults’ spiritual communications in family, social, leisure and recreation domains are more influential to their QOL than the other factors related to basic life needs.

Effects of multifaceted consumption on happiness in life: a case study in Japan based on an integrated approach

Motivated by the ever-increasing importance of happiness in public policy and limited studies about the influences of various consumption choices on happiness, we made an initial attempt to clarify the influences of a larger set of consumption variables (77 variables covering eight major life domains) on whole-of-life happiness and on happiness at the domain level, by collecting data from 2,178 respondents residing in various cities across Japan in 2010. We proposed an integrated approach to identify factors that influence happiness based on an exhaustive Chi-squared automatic interaction detector (CHAID) approach and to quantify the degree of influence of each factor based on a Bayesian belief network (BBN) approach. The results from the exhaustive CHAID approach provide inputs to the BBN approach. As a result, 41 out of the 77 consumption variables were found to influence happiness. Whole-of-life happiness is influenced by a different set of consumption variables to happiness at the domain level. Income only influences whole-of-life happiness, but it is not the most influential factor. Saving is most important to enhancing people’s whole-of-life happiness. One’s current work-life balance does not matter for happiness. Education-related consumption variables are only associated with negative affective experiences, and surprisingly, they are unrelated to whole-of-life happiness. The effects on happiness of expenditure- and residence-related consumption variables and of consumption choices to maintain an active lifestyle are mixed. Unfortunately, none of the residence-related variables influences whole-of-life happiness. Communication with neighbors is important to positive affective experiences. Finally, we argue that happiness issues might be better captured within the framework of the life-oriented approach.

Revisiting residential self-selection issues: A life-oriented approach

It has been widely argued that residential self-selection stems from two sources: attitudes and sociodemographic traits. This argument would be true if decisions were made with respect to only residential choice and travel behavior. Because they are just a part of people’s life choice, the influence of life choice on self-selection cannot be ignored. In this context, a life-oriented approach becomes relevant, where residential and travel decisions are interdependent not only with each other, but also with other life domains as a part of general life decisions. This paper conceptually argued and empirically confirmed the necessity of developing a life-oriented approach to reexamine residential self-selection issues. I proposed that life choices should be treated as an additional source of the self-selection, and dynamic interdependences between residential choice, travel behavior, and other life choices should be properly modeled. From a policy perspective, the life-oriented approach suggests that successful transport and land use policies should be designed together with policies in other significantly relevant sectors (e.g., health and environment) and such cross-sectoral policies could better contribute to the improvement of people’s quality of life.

Applying a Life-oriented Approach to Evaluate the Relationship between Residential and Travel Behavior and Quality of Life based on an Exhaustive CHAID Approach

People's daily-life choices are closely linked with the quality of life (QOL), which can be roughly captured from the perspective of life domains like residence, neighborhood, health, education, job, family life, family budget, leisure and recreation, as well as relevant travel behavior. Since different life choices are interdependent, transport and land use policies may have influences on people's various life aspects and sequentially on the QOL, and vice versa, which maybe affect transport and land use decisions. To capture such complicated interdependencies, this study applies an exhaustive CHAID approach (a data mining approach), based on a life-oriented analysis. Firstly, the influence of residential and travel behavior on QOL, measured in the form of life satisfaction and happiness is evaluated. Secondly, considering residential choices and travel behavior are a part of people's daily- life behavior (choices), the effects of daily-life behavior on residential and travel behavior are examined in reverse. This study adopted a life choice survey with 900 households collected in Japan in 2010. Analysis results show that the exhaustive CHAID approach is applicable to capture the behavioral interdependencies between residential and travel behavior, as well as QOL. It is confirmed that people's QOL can be greatly shaped by residential and travel behavior jointly. Conversely, it is further clarified that the residential and travel behavior are influenced by the daily-life behavior (choices) involving each life domain to different degrees.