Happiness and travel behavior modification
Document Type
Conference Paper
Publication Date
10-2008
Subject Area
ridership - attitudes
Abstract
We develop and test a new approach for measuring travel well-being that accounts for the routine nature of travel. We postulate that when people are in a routine, they don’t fully consider their travel happiness, and consequently the happiness measure they report is not a good indicator of their happiness. Only when people evaluate their options and reconsider their decisions will they think of their travel happiness. Consequently, a travel happiness measure collected at the time of decision-making might be a better measure of their happiness. To test this hypothesis, an experiment was conducted at three employment centers in Switzerland requiring habitual car drivers to switch temporarily to public transportation for their commute to work. The idea is that after the public transportation trial, the participants would think of their happiness as they reconsider their mode choice decisions. Participants’ travel happiness, perceptions, attitudes, and mode choice were measured before and after the intervention. Two main findings emerged from the analysis: first, the measures of happiness with the commute by car collected before and after the public transportation trial were different, with generally a greater happiness with car reported after the experiment. Using the happiness measures as additional indicators of utility, a greater correlation was found between utility and the “after” measure, which supports the hypothesis that the measure of travel happiness collected when people evaluate their options is a better measure than that collected when they are in a routine. The implications for the measurement of well-being could apply to other domains involving routine behavior. Second, a number of participants continued to commute by public transportation after the required trial, which suggests that a temporary change in behavior might be effective in inducing behavioral modification or at least in affecting people’s choice sets. This has policy implications for public transportation agencies or institutions that are trying to encourage car drivers to shift to public transportation.
Recommended Citation
Abou-Zeid, M., & Ben-Akiva, M., & Bierlaire, M. (2008). Happiness and travel behavior modication. Paper from The Association for European Transport Conference held in Leeuwenhorst Conference Centre, The Netherlands on 6-10 October 2008.
Comments
Permission to publish abstract given by AET.