The role of well-being in transport policy
Highlights
► Governments and policy-makers are seeing the importance of supporting psychological well-being. ► Few researchers have considered whether transport can influence well-being. ► Early empirical research suggests that transport can influence well-being in some situations. ► It is theorised that it does so through access to activities, physical mobility and externalities. ► More research is needed to understand the impact transport policy can have on life satisfaction.
Introduction
Transport policy provides a decision-making framework to balance the competing interests of economic growth, environmental stewardship, safety, mobility, accessibility and social services. The economic, environmental and functional aspects of the transport system are much discussed and researched whereas the social impacts of transport are only recently gaining attention, generally through discussions of equity and social inclusion (Lucas, 2004, Lucas, 2010, Currie et al., 2007, Geurs et al., 2008).
Some have argued that the ultimate goal of government is to grow and maintain a sense of happiness, quality of life or well-being in its citizens (Manderson, 2005, Kahn and Juster, 2002). Some 77% of Australians agreed that ‘a government's prime objective should be achieving the greatest happiness of the people, not the greatest wealth’ (Hamilton and Rush, 2006, p. 15) and the Australian Federal Treasury has made their mission statement to ‘improve the well-being of the Australian people’ (Australian Federal Treasury, 2009). Internationally, the World Health Organisation has established a guideline for measuring quality of life (Saxena and Orley, 1997) and the OECD has guidelines for measuring societal well-being (Boarini et al., 2006). Bhutan has even gone so far as to measure ‘gross national happiness’ instead of gross national product (The Centre for Bhutan Studies, 2009). In 2010 the UK government added a “happiness index” to its Integrated Household Survey (Ramesh, 2011).
Yet despite this growing emphasis on the importance of psychological well-being, there is little attention devoted to how the transport system can influence well-being. Accessibility enables participation in life's essential tasks including work, health maintenance and education. It also facilitates psychologically important activities such as leisure and socialisation. Although many of these tasks can be accomplished through alternative means (such as online communication), transport facilitates greater life participation (Metz, 2003) which should, in turn, enhance well-being.
Recent work has suggested that improved well-being, not improved mobility or accessibility, should be the ultimate social policy goal in transport (Stanley and Stanley, 2007). Without this goal in mind, social policy in transport may end up encouraging mobility just for the sake of it (with the associated impacts on congestion and the environment), without tying those policies back to specific well-being outcomes (Stanley and Vella-Brodrick, 2009, Stanley and Stanley, 2007).
The aim of this paper is to explore the role that well-being currently plays in transport policy and scope out its potential to inform transport policy in future. It hypothesises that transport can have a measurable impact on psychological well-being and suggests a model through which this may take place. It is not the intention of this paper to provide a comprehensive criticism of the shortcomings of transport policy and planning. Rather it is to explore how well-being can be considered in addition to, rather than instead of, traditional aims and measures.
The paper begins with a brief discussion of the definition of well-being before outlining the current treatment of well-being in transport policy and planning. It will explain the difference between well-being and ‘quality of life’ and then outline some of the factors that have the largest influence on well-being. It will then propose a framework conceptualising the impacts of transport on well-being and provide a detailed review of studies that have established links between transport and well-being. The paper finishes by discussing the implications for transport policy and need for future research.
Section snippets
What is well-being? A note on definitions
The concept of subjective well-being goes by different names in different research contexts. In general this paper uses the terms well-being, life satisfaction and happiness somewhat interchangeably. All of these terms are characterised by the fact that they are subjectively determined by individuals and measured at the level of the individual (Diener, 1984). Measures of subjective well-being may be domain-specific (e.g., ‘how satisfied are you with your work life?’) or global (e.g., ‘how
Transport, economics and well-being
Much of transport policy and planning is centred in economic principles such as cost-benefit analysis which rely on the monetisation of benefits. For many transport programs this relies on monetising travel time savings based on a fixed value of working and non-working time1. Reducing travel time is presumed to provide
Well-being within a sustainability framework
The sustainability framework is one area where the social and well-being impacts of transport are beginning to be addressed. The concept of sustainable development has received increasing attention in recent decades (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) and it is gaining traction within the transport field as well. Although the lay understanding of sustainability generally focuses on environmental stewardship, more broadly sustainability is comprised of three aspects:
Quality of life
It is important to return to the distinction between subjective well-being and quality of life measures. In the field of transport, one is more likely to read about quality of life (QoL) than about well-being or satisfaction with life. The concept of QoL was developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to understand the broader impacts of health on people's lives (Saxena and Orley, 1997). The WHO consulted with a wide panel of international experts and non-professionals to reach the
The making of happiness
In order to explore how the transport system can facilitate positive well-being, transport researchers must have an understanding of what makes people happy. Both the psychology literature and to a lesser extent economic literature provides an understanding of what influences well-being.
First it is important to note that average life satisfaction is relatively stable over the lifespan because of the fairly stable effects of personality traits such as emotional stability (Diener and Lucas, 1999,
Conceptualising transport's role in influencing well-being
Based on this discussion of major influences on well-being, Fig. 1 outlines the possible influences that transport can have on subjective well-being. The model suggests that the transport system can influence subjective well-being through three different approaches: access to important activities, physical mobility and physical infrastructure.
The influence of accessibility is the most developed of the three as it has the clearest correlates to the psychological needs outlined in the literature.
Evidence linking transport and mobility to well-being
Despite the ultimate importance of life satisfaction, very little empirical work has directly studied the impact that transport may have on well-being (see Table 1). The small body of extant research varies greatly in how it measures transport or mobility, how it defines well-being and the methods used to draw its conclusions. Some studies use objective measures of mobility such as number of trips or out-of-home activities (e.g., Stanley et al., 2011b, Spinney et al., 2009); others use
Methodological limitations, future research and policy directions
The existing body of research on this topic is still quite small. This provides many opportunities to expand research in this area in order to provide useful ways to inform future policy decisions. The following section describes some of the methodological limitations of the extant literature before suggesting areas for further research and policy.
One of the major methodological limitations of this body of work is how the independent variable is selected and the impact this has on the results.
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