Study On High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being During Travel: Conception,Influencing Factors And Measure

Although the construction of China’s High-speed Railway is more than 40 years later than that of foreign countries,its development is very rapid.In just 20 years,China has surpassed the achievements of foreign countries in more than half a century.The mileage of operation has been firmly ranked the first in the world,and a number of high-speed railway technologies are leading the world.By the end of 2020,China had37,900 kilometers of high-speed rail in operation,and the cost of a single kilometer of High-speed Rail typically ranges from 150 million yuan to 250 million yuan.Such huge investment is aimed at "meeting the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life" and "working for their happiness".Compared with ordinary railway,convenient,fast,safe and comfortable High-speed Rail Travel can make passengers get more satisfaction and positive emotions,and the whole process of choosing high-speed rail travel is easier to generate happiness.How do you define the happiness? What factors affect the happiness of High-speed Rail passengers? How can this happiness be measured? Based on the above problems,this paper takes "High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel" as the research object.On the basis of the related subjects such as economics,psychology and neurology theory,this paper creates a theoretical framework for High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel and analyzes the influencing factors and mechanism of High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel,which largely fills the blank of High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel research and has important theoretical significance.On the other hand,this paper takes the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway as an example to empirically verify the factors influencing the High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel,and constructs and measures the passenger happiness index.The construction of the passenger happiness index has universal value.By measuring the passenger happiness index of the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway,not only the annual travel happiness index of the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway can be calculated according to the time series,but also the happiness index of other High-speed Railway lines and the overall High-speed Railway network.At the same time,the construction of the passenger happiness index also verifies again the relevant factors that affect passengers’ High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel.Empirical analysis proves the construction of High-speed Rail to the positive role of passenger travel happiness.The empirical study also found the deficiencies in China’s High-speed Railway operation services,which can not only provide decision-making support for China’s High-speed Railway infrastructure investment,but also put forward important optimization strategies for China’s High-speed Railway operation management.It has important practical value.Existing studies on the High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel mainly focus on the field of High-speed Rail Travel Satisfaction,namely cognitive evaluation.As the cognitive level is closer to rational decision-making,the inner emotional reaction of passengers is missing,so the research results cannot reflect the travel status of passengers comprehensively and accurately.To study the travel status of high-speed rail passengers,we should not only rely on the cognitive satisfaction evaluation,which is divorced from reality and one-sided.Instead,we should introduce the emotional level to measure the positive and negative emotions of passengers and analyze the travel status of high-speed rail passengers.High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel is more comprehensive,accurate and important than High-speed Rail Travel Satisfaction.The paper finds that sages have different understandings of happiness.In the long history of China,Confucianism,Taoism and Buddhism have gradually formed three views on happiness.Foreign scholars also put forward "realization theory" and "hedonism" two views of happiness,the former is called " Objective Well-being",the latter is called " Subjective Well-being".The existing studies of home and foreign scholars mostly focus on the field of subjective well-being and regarded as an overall evaluation and perception of one’s own life quality based on the standards set by oneself in life,including cognitive evaluation and emotional response.At the same time,happiness cannot be equated with utility,and utility is more about personal satisfaction.The connotation of happiness has gone beyond utility.Happiness is not equal to satisfaction.Satisfaction is only the cognitive level of personal subjective happiness,reflecting personal subjective evaluation of things,and satisfaction does not play a leading role in subjective happiness.Later generations put forward travel happiness on the basis of subjective well-being theory,which mainly refers to individuals’ emotional experience and satisfaction evaluation of the overall trip and a certain factor during the trip,and also includes cognitive and emotional aspects.Based on the review of existing research literature,this paper puts forward the concept of HSR travel happiness based on subjective well-being and travel happiness theory.In a broad sense,High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel refers to the subjective well-being of passengers during travel,which is mainly composed of Cognitions evaluation and Affect Reactions.The cognitive level includes not only the satisfaction evaluation generated by the overall situation of passengers in the process of taking high-speed rail,but also the satisfaction evaluation generated by a certain aspect of passengers in the process of taking high-speed rail.The affect reactions refer to that passengers feel and express their travel emotions during the whole process of high-speed rail.The emotions can be felt as a complete travel subject or a certain aspect of the travel process.In the narrow sense,High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel only includes emotional factors.This paper divides the factors that affect passengers’ sense of travelling on high-speed railway into three parts: personal factors,variable factors and fixed factors,and puts forward a scale to measure the High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel on the basis of literature review.Based on the data of 1412 High-speed Rail passenger questionnaires,this paper conducts an empirical study on the travel happiness of Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway passengers by using correlation analysis and ordered Logit model through questionnaire survey.The analysis results show that the opening and speeding up of beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway has increased the travel opportunities of passengers and is conducive to realizing the equality of travel opportunities.The personality of passengers has a certain influence on the High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel.Having and cultivating an optimistic and cheerful personality and keeping a meticulous and cautious attitude are very conducive to improving their High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel.There is also a certain connection between passengers’ travel mood and their travel happiness.When passengers are in positive mood,their sense of travel happiness will be stronger.Passengers’ High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel is positively proportional to their marital status,religious belief,occupation and health degree,and inversely proportional to their own cultural and educational level.In the process of travelling on Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway,except the two third-level factors of carriage environment and ticket fairness,the factors at all levels have a positive impact on passengers’ High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel.Among them,passengers pay more attention to the thoughtfulness and comfort of high-speed rail services,such as the quietness of trains,the environment of high-speed rail stations,and the appropriateness of ticket prices.In this paper,the entropy weight method is used to construct the travel happiness index of Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway.The analysis results show that the travel happiness index of passengers on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is 81.30,and the overall happiness degree is high in the range of "80-90 points".Passengers believe that the service level of Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is relatively high in terms of safety,convenience,travel time,travel environment and other aspects.Due to the influence of the noise level of high-speed railway carriages,data communication services,high-speed railway ticket price,connection ticket price between high-speed railway and other transportation means and the fairness of ticket purchase,etc.,the passengers think that the service level of The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway is low in terms of considerate service,comfort,travel cost and travel fairness.According to the main conclusions of the paper,the corresponding policy suggestions are put forward.The main suggestions include relying on scientific management to ensure the safety of high-speed rail operation;the high-speed rail ticket price floating system is fully implemented to meet the travel needs of different passengers;improving the management and technology level to increase the supply of high-speed rail passenger transport and improve passengers’ High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel;scientifically planning the layout of high-speed railway stations to achieve seamless connection between high-speed railway stations and cities.The main innovation points of this paper are three aspects.Firstly,based on the theories of economics,psychology,neurology and other related disciplines,this paper defines the concept of High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel for the first time from the perspective of generating mechanism of High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel,and differentiates the concepts of happiness,satisfaction and utility as well as cognition and emotion,clarifying some misunderstandings in existing studies.Secondly,the paper redivides the influencing factors of High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel,analyzes the generating mechanism of High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel from multiple perspectives,and introduces traffic fairness verified by empirical study into the analysis of High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel for the first time.Thirdly,through empirical analysis,this paper measures the Happiness index of Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Rail passengers with universal value,which also verifies the related factors that affect passengers’ High-speed Rail Subjective Well-being during Travel.