UWE recently came forward with an interesting study. UWE finds that adding an additional 20 minutes of commuting per day has the same negative effect on job satisfaction as receiving a 19% pay cut.

The notion of ‘wellbeing’ has become an increasingly salient issue for governments across the world where it is recognised that measures of economic growth do not necessarily reflect quality of life. Wellbeing refers to the extent to which people’s lives are going well and is most often measured subjectively by asking people to evaluate their own lives – for example, through questions such as “How satisfied are you with life overall?”.

Recent research has shown that different aspects of personal wellbeing can be affected by commuting e.g. Long commutes may worsen wellbeing by consuming time that workers would rather spend on family and social activities. However, there is little evidence to date, of how different commuting behaviors impact on personal wellbeing over the medium term, for example, over a period of five years.

This study asked three research questions:

What specific aspects of wellbeing (e.g. satisfaction with leisure time, feeling constantly under strain) are related to commuting and how do personal and spatial characteristics affect this?

How do different commuting behaviors influence the development of wellbeing over time? and

How do changes in life situation (e.g. moving home, changing jobs) and commuting behaviors influence personal wellbeing over time?

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