The Impacts Of Commuting Time On Subjective Well- Being And Personal Health

Since the reform and opening up, with the constant improving of people’s living standards, the pursuit of subjective well-being and health has become a common wish of urban inhabitants. Meanwhile, governments at all level have set the goal to improve citizens’happiness and to construct healthy cities. In the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, China had conveyed the concept of future development of cities with the slogan " Better city, better Life", appealing for a profound thinking of how to make people live in a better way. However, the present situation is unsatisfying as the "urban disease" is becoming increasingly critical. People are revaluing the necessity of living in cities, especially those large cities. As the well-known Easterlin Paradox reveals, individual happiness has nothing to do with the income, if the latter is higher than a certain level. People are overwhelmed by the pressure of living and working, having little time to take care of themselves, which harms their health in a long run. Are the cities making better livings for people? This remains a question for us all to think about.Among the numerous "urban diseases", the terrible commuting problem is no doubt the most serious one. Commute is a part of our daily life and has a lot to do with the personal-reported happiness and healthy status. Daniel Kahneman, the winner of Nobel Prize of Economic Science in 2002, the professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, claims that commute is the most unpopular activity among 16 main activities of our daily life (including working). Clearly, commute is publicly acknowledged as an unavoidable annoying activity. As a survey conducted by an authority agency shows, the average time people spent on commute in inland China in 2014 is 40 minutes, that is much longer than the average of the world level, which is 32.5 minutes. In the Commuter Pain Survey published by IBM in 2011, Beijing and Shenzhen ranked the second and the third of the list. The commuting time in China, obviously, is longer than the world average, which has a negative impact not only on people’s self-reported happiness but also on people’s health, because people would have little time to spend on their health management. Nevertheless, with the modern communicating technology being invented and improved, various devices and apps have provide the commuting time with positive meanings. People could do a variety stuffs while commuting, such as reading, watching TV-dramas, learning English language, receiving and sending E-mails etc. The commuting time in modern age is endowed with a new and positive meaning.Then, what exactly is the relationship between the commuting time and personal happiness and health. Is it harmful to happiness and health or is it meaningful because of the scientific and technological progress. That is the core issue of concern in this paper. What is the motive of those people who are willing to accept more time spent on commuting? Will they be compensated for the cost? In answering these questions, this paper is divided into seven chapters. The first three chapters are about theories and basic backgrounds of the studies. It starts from domestic and foreign classical theories and literature of commuting activities, using the theories and methods of economics, geography and sociology, the data provided by CFPS (2010) and Shanghai Residents Commuting Survey, to make a research on the status quo and factors of commuting time. The fourth and fifth chapter studies the impact of commuting time, respectively, on self-reported happiness and health status by empirical research. The sixth chapter discovers the reason and mechanism behind those who are willing to accept a longer commuting time. The detailed arrangement of the chapters is as follows:Chapter One, introduction. This chapter elaborates the background and the meaning of this paper. It makes an overview of the arrangement of the paper and the frame of the research, introduces the data sources and the research methods, and lays the foundation of the study.Chapter Two, theoretical foundation and literature review. This chapter sorts out the classical theories of commuting activities from the perspective of Regional Economics, Urban Economics, Urban Geography etc. Meanwhile, it studies on the related literature, in order to keep up with the latest development and progress of the research.Chapter Three, the analysis of the status quo and the factor of commuting time. This chapter studies the status quo of time spent on commute in cities of China with ArcGIS10.1, including the spatial differences of commuting time, the characteristics of commuting time and of commuting modes etc. Through the data of CFPS, it makes an inquiry of the factors in commuting time. In order to study the impact of space characteristics on commuting time, this chapter sets Shanghai City as an example and researches on the status quo and the factors of commuting activities.Chapter Four, the relationship between commuting time and subjective well-being. On the basis of happiness economics, using the data of CFPS, this chapter studies the impact of commuting time on self-reported happiness, by controlling other variables, and conducts the robustness test with life satisfaction index. Furthermore, it also studies the heterogeneity of the impact made by commuting time on subjective well-being, concerning the different stages of economic development of different cities.Chapter Five, the relationship between commuting time and personal health. Using the data of CFPS and the Shanghai micro-survey, from the perspective of subjective health, objective health, health behavior and mental condition, this chapter studies the impact of commuting time on personal health. And it conducts the robustness test on different areas and different sex for the accuracy.Chapter Six, housing market’s compensation over commuting time. This chapter discusses the relationship between housing market and commuting time. It begins with a whole country basis, and then sets Shanghai as a city example, using the data presented by the questionnaire to analyze the relationship between housing market and commuting time. Furthermore, it focuses on vulnerable members (the low skill, the low earned, and agricultural registered permanent residences) to examine if they get compensation from the housing market, on bearing the heavy commuting pressure and thus leads to the discussion of inequality in terms of urban space.Chapter Seven, conclusion and enlightenment. This chapter presents the conclusion of the analysis, putting forward policy recommendations to the problems. It also points out the deficiencies of the paper and looks forward to the future development in this area.Main conclusions of this paper:(1) Individuals significantly differ from each other in terms of commuting time, on which micro-building-environment has a great impact.In according to the national wide scale of research, personal commuting time varies from individuals, and from sexes. The determinant of commuting time for men is mainly the income, while the women are the marriage and family status. By using the spatial analysis approach, the paper examines the street scale building environment, finding that the micro-building-environment has a lot to do with the commuting time. The commuting time decreases as the reachability of workplace improves. Multicenter development strategy also plays a part in it. The study shows that the equilibrium level of distance between workplace and residential place has a significant effect on commuting time.(2)Terrible commute harms subjective well-being and satisfaction on life. Empirical researches show that commute time costs happiness. Commute time has a negative impact on self-reported happiness of working people, in a national wide research scale. Although it simply displays a weak U relation, few people are willing to accept a rather long commuting time. The longer the commuting time is, the poorer self-reported happiness becomes. Furthermore, the impact of commuting time upon subjective well-being differs between individuals due to different sexes, marriage status, registered permanent residence and income level. It seems females are more likely to be affected in a negative way by a long commuting time; urban residents are more sensitive than rural residents in reaction to the fluctuation of commuting time. For those who have a relatively high household income, a longer commuting time immensely drag down the happiness index. Therefore, cutting the commuting time and improving the commuting efficiency are vital actions in promoting people’s self-reported happiness.(3) Both mental and physical health are adversely affected by a long commuting time.In chapter five, the personal health is divided into four parts, i.e. subjective health, objective health, health behavior and state of mind, so that the impact could be seen more accurately. As the analysis shows, commuting time has a prominent negative impact on personal health, especially in terms of health behavior and state of mind. The impact on objective health is impermanent, usually a transient discomfort, while on health behavior is prominent and significant. Sleeping time decreases while commuting time increases. Similarly, negative emotion would also be brought by a longer commuting time. Men are more sensitive in terms of subjective health while women the state of mind. In terms of different areas, the Eastern are more adversly affected, indicating the negative impact of commuting time is more serious in the east.(4) Generally speaking, there is a certain connection between housing market and commuting time, in terms of the housing price. Based on the analysis on either the whole country or Shanghai City only, it shows a clear negative correlation between housing price and the commuting time. That means the housing market provides the long-time commuting people with a balancing compensation. And the balancing compensation does not vary between different educational background and income background. It indicates that people prefer the house price compensation than the house demand compensation to some extent.(5) The correlation between housing area and commuting time is not prominent. According to the results of empirical studies, the demand for a bigger house due to the decrease of housing price led by a longer commuting time does not exist. For agricultural registered permanent residence, the longer one’s commuting time is, the smaller one’s house is, which reflects the poor condition the migrant workers are in.(6) The correlation between housing property right and the commuting time differ in various groups. In average, the correlation is not prominent, however, to high-skilled workers, more commuting time means the ownership of housing properties. They could have an apartment of their own rather than rent one from others. Thus, it is clear that for those who are in a relatively decent economic condition, with certain working skills, would choose to increase the commuting time to meet the demand of having a house. On the contrary, the migrant workers, or the agricultural registered permanent residence, could not reach the same goal even if they sacrifice their time on commute.