Chapter 2.Review of Related Literature

CHAPTER 2.REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE:

In the past decades, subjective well-being has become a crucial component of the agenda of governments, and measures of subjective well-being are often wont to assess the prices and benefits of policies e.g., (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004),(Dolan et al., 2008),(Tinkler, 2015). consistent with the planet Happiness Report 2015 of the United Nations, happier and more satisfied people are more likely to be healthier, productive, and pro-social, leading to benefits for the society as an entire, i.e. higher economic productivity, stronger social welfare, greater societal resilience to natural hazards, and greater mutual care (World Happiness Report 2015 | The World Happiness Report, n.d.). Therefore, most governments and international organizations regard subjective well-being because the most comprehensive measure of wealth, replacing traditional measures like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a few social indicators (“OECD Guidel. Meas. Subj. Well-Being,” 2013).

Commuting is a crucial component of daily work activities, significantly contributing to the wellbeing of the working population, yet its impact on employee productivity has surprisingly been little studied. Employee productivity (also mentioned as workforce productivity) is broadly defined because of the efficiency of a worker, and it's important for organizations and societies. (Diener, 2012)

Understanding the connection between commuting and well-being may offer insight into workers' quality of life and contribute to programs and policies designed to raised support population well-being. Further, understanding how commuting is said to how we feel offers insight into ways of improving existing transportation services, prioritizing investments, and theorizing and modeling the prices and benefits of the visit work.

A growing body of evidence shows that commuting is often detrimental to people’s wellbeing and overall life satisfaction. Indeed, recent studies supported large scale national surveys show that commuting duration is negatively related to subjective well-being which the magnitude of this effect outweighs the economic benefits of traveling to and from work, like cheaper housing and better pay(Bryson et al., 2016)(Morris & Guerra, 2015)(Roberts et al., 2011)(Stutzer & Frey, 2008) . More specifically, commuting contributes to elevated stress levels, and more so if an individual travels by car instead of a bicycle or conveyance.

Stress is one of the most serious physical and mental health implications of commuting. Almost all commuting can be stressful rushing to get to work or school in the morning is often an unpleasant experience and some modes may be causing more stress than others. Discovering the mode-specific factors that contribute to a stressful commute highlights where policy focused on increasing sustainable mode-share can be effective. Sustainable mode use can be made more attractive by minimizing the factors that make sustainable modes stressful. Perhaps more importantly, commuting is almost ubiquitous: a hefty share of any population travels daily and, correspondingly, the stress experienced while commuting affects a large

number of people.(Avila-Palencia et al., 2017)(Legrain et al., 2015).

Not all studies agree, however(Ory et al., 2004)report that a particular portion of the population enjoys the activity of commuting, and (Friman et al., 2017) found feelings during commutes to be predominantly positive or neutral. There are increasing debates in both academia and industry concerning how commuting might influence employee productivity. There are claims, for instance, that workers with an extended commute are more likely to be burned out, stressed, and fall ill (Wener et al., 2003)(Novaco & Gonzalez, 2009) and thus more likely to be absent from work and perform poorly at work. There also are claims that workers who commute by walking and bicycling are more productive due to the health, cognitive and psychological benefits of active travel (Handy et al., 2014). Although these claims assume a causal relationship between commuting and productivity, studies that directly examine this relationship are quite sparse.

The movement of people in rural and urban areas is reflected in a diverse group of developing countries. Various studies have highlighted the importance of getting closer to the city utilizing transportation for domestic workers. A recent study in North-East Thailand revealed that people are willing to travel up to 12.42 miles from rural areas to work in industrial clusters. (Shirai et al., 2019). In Indonesia, rural-urban commuting has been observed within the 60-km periphery of industrialized cities (Douglass, 2019). A study of two villages from Bihar in India revealed the importance of distance to the city and communication (Datta et al., 2014). They find that in Chandkura, a village near Patna, the capital of Bihar, workers were commuting up to 30 km every day while migration was observed in Mahisham, a village that was not near a large city.

In addition to the proximity to cities, the most important determinant of travel is the gradient of income, e.g. The level of income decreased as the distance to the city increased. The wage gradient is also a function of the distribution of jobs by industries and activities that continue to be carried out in rural and urban areas as well. Based on data analysis from India Human Development Survey 2004-2005, (Sharma, 2016) identifies the following patterns in the context of India. First, in locations closer to the city, one is more likely to observe regular wage or salaried individuals or self-employed rather than workers being engaged in agricultural activities. A stylized fact is that income from non-farm activities decreases as the distance from urban settlements increases. This pattern is also observed in other countries. Proximity to urban centers is associated with an increase in non-farm employment in Ghana (Diao et al., 2019) (Sharma & Chandrasekhar, 2014) find that the average wages of ruralurban commuters are the highest followed by workers living and working in rural areas, with rural workers with no fixed place of work having the lowest average wages. Similar results are evident in China. (Duvivier et al., 2013) find wages to be higher by 15% in the vicinity of the city as compared to remote hinterland workers. The wage differential and unemployment rate are related. (Sharma & Chandrasekhar, 2014) find that regional rural and urban unemployment rates and rural-urban wage differentials are important to push and pull factors in the decision to commute.

However, subjective well-being covers a wider range of concepts than just life satisfaction. Subjective well-being is defined as a person's cognitive and affective evaluation of his or her life, and encompasses different elements: the cognitive component consists of life satisfaction and satisfaction with specific life domains (e.g., satisfaction with family life, work satisfaction), while the affective component refers to positive emotions, moods and feelings (e.g., joy, pride) and negative ones (e.g., anger, worry) a person has(Diener, 2012).

In contrast to the above-mentioned studies on the effect of commuting on overall life satisfaction, much less is known about the consequences of commuting on satisfaction with other life domains and emotions, although it has been shown that a distinction is important on both empirical and theoretical grounds e.g., (Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology. - PsycNET, n.d.),(Kahneman & Deaton, 2010)

Thus, this article aims to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between commuting distance and well-being by considering several components of subjective wellbeing, such as cognitive evaluations of one's life and specific life domains (i.e., satisfaction

with family life, leisure time, income, work, and health), positive emotions (i.e., happiness), and negative ones (i.e., anger, worry, sadness), and potential explanatory factors in links between commuting and well- being. Since the aim of (transport) policies is to increase individuals' well-being, it is worthwhile to investigate how this different component of wellbeing depends on the travel to work (Olsson et al., 2013).