通勤时间的幸福绩效——基于中国家庭追踪调查的实证研究

THE IMPACT OF COMMUTING TIME ON SUBJECTIVE HAPPINESS:EVIDENCE FROM CHINA FAMILY PANEL SURVEY DATA

幸福不仅是个人的心愿,也是城市管理者的执政目标之一,因此,对于城市中普遍存在的通勤时间过长所带来的心理影响研究十分必要。本文采用中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)数据,考察了通勤时间对于个人主观幸福感的影响。实证结果显示,通勤时间对于个人幸福感存在显著的负向影响,随着个人通勤时间的增加,个人幸福感也随之降低。通勤时间与生活满意度也同样呈现显著的负相关,这也证明了结论的稳健性。通过进一步考察通勤时间负面影响的异质性发现,通勤时间对幸福感的影响在不同社会群体间存在差异,对于个人收入高、教育程度高、家庭收入高的居民而言,通勤时间所造成的负面心理影响更大。因此,政府应重视通勤对居民幸福感的影响,并致力于提高交通效率。

People pay more and more attention to happiness research in modern life. The happiness is the goal not only for individual but also for city authority. Over the past decades, much of the research concerning happiness was about the relationship between happiness and social factors, such as income inequality, pubic investment, air pollution and so on. There are some possible reasons that can explain why commuting time is associated with subjective happiness. Firstly, with the increase of commuting cost, people will have lower disposable personal income so that there will be a decrease in their subjective happiness. Secondly, if people spend more time on commuting, it means that he will lack time to do other things, like social contact and sports. This will do harm to their body and mental health. Last but not the least, commuting time can affect job searching and working performance. Based on CFPS data, we use an ordered logit regression model to investigate the effect of commuting time on individual＇s happiness. We take the subjective happiness as dependent variable which is based on the question ＇how happy are you with your life, all things considered？＇. The key explanatory variable is commuting time derived from the question ＇how much time do you spend in the way from home to work？＇. In order to explore the robustness of the effect of commuting time, we put the explanatory variables into the model step by step. We find that commuting time has an important detrimental effect on individual＇s subjective happiness. People with longer commuting time have lower subjective happiness. The result is robust with regard to life satisfaction.