New approaches in transportation planning: happiness and transport economics

By André Duarte, Camila García, Grigoris Giannarakis, Susana Limao, Amalia Polydoropoulou, N. Litinas. 2010

136 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The measurement of social and psychological phenomena has been advanced by recent progress in the fields of behavioural economics and hedonic psychology. In addition, the increased interest in understanding how individuals perceive their own quality of life, has led to investigating the relations between various macro and individual level variables, generically subsumed as happiness. For many “happiness is considered to be an ultimate goal in life” and it plays an important role in the way people perceive the overall society they live in. Therefore, social scientists and behavioural economists are now stressing the importance of well-being measures, related to people’s evaluations of their quality of life in addition to economic indicators. In the transport sector, project evaluation is mainly based on cost–benefit analyses using economic indicators. However, any provided transportation project/service impacts the quality of the travel experience, the well-being of travellers and their travel behaviour. Competitiveness of modes may be also affected by the promotion of derived or experienced travellers’ well-being. Thus, existing behavioural travel choice models should be enhanced with regards to their behavioural validity incorporating the impacts of travelling happiness/ satisfaction. This study aims to understand and model the impact of stated (anticipated) happiness in the decision choice between a private transport mode—car, and a public transport mode—metro.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science, Transportation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b8f253c1b526836ff5c52c04e0345da07178d648

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Citations in the corpus

Well-being and Mobility: A Theoretical Framework and Literature Review Focusing on Older People (2014, background): “…everyday life with well-being and quality of life, both in mobilities research (Kronlid 2008; Freudendal-Pedersen 2009; Ziegler and Schwanen 2011; see also Urry 2007, 185–210) and in transport studies (Duarte et al. 2010; Ettema et al. 2010; Abou-Zeid and Ben-Akiva 2011; Delbosc and Currie 2011).”
Travel and Subjective Well-Being: A Focus on Findings, Methods and Future Research Needs (2013, background): “…used loosely by transport researchers to indicate both the cognitive and the affective evaluation of trips.2 Previous research shows that active travel seems to contribute to higher levels of travel satisfaction than motorised travel (Abou-Zeid, 2009; Duarte et al., 2010; Olsson et al., 2013).”
How satisfying is the Scale for Travel Satisfaction (2015, background): “Various studies have shown that active travel generates the highest levels of travel satisfaction, while public transport users’ experience is most negative (Abou-Zeid, 2009; De Vos et al., 2015; Duarte et al., 2010; Ettema et al., 2011; Friman et al., 2013; Olsson et al., 2013).”
Satisfaction-induced travel behaviour (2019, unknown): “…usual trip to work Stressful, Exciting, Boring, Relaxing, Pleasant, Interesting, Depressing (aggregated) 1) Cycling; 2) Walking; 3) Car; 4) PT Duarte et al. (2010) Respondents from multiple countries Commute trips Overall level of satisfaction 1) Cycling; 2) Walking; 3) Metro; 4) Train; 5)…”
Travel mode choice and travel satisfaction: bridging the gap between decision utility and experienced utility (2016, result): “These findings concur with previous research on travel satisfaction (Abou-Zeid 2009; Duarte et al. 2010; Friman et al. 2013; Olsson et al. 2013).”
Mood and mode: does how we travel affect how we feel? (2014, background): “The finding that walkers and bicyclists are happier than those traveling in motorized vehicles, perhaps due to the benefits of exercise, is also echoed by Duarte et al. (2010).”