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

Zuoxian Gan, Tao Feng and Min Yang
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Zuoxian Gan: Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Urban Traffic Technologies, School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Tao Feng: Urban Planning Group, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven 5600MB, The Netherlands
Min Yang: Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban ITS, Jiangsu Province Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Urban Traffic Technologies, School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-20

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.

Keywords: life satisfaction; negative emotions; ordered probit model; commuting; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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