The relationship between overall happiness and perceived transportation services relative to other individual and environmental variables

Studies on happiness determinants have mainly focused on individual characteristics, but recently, the focus was extended to public services. Regarding the role of transportation services, however, few discussions exist on the overall happiness beyond the transitory happiness from a single trip, which differs by the mechanical characteristics of the transportation means, and particularly, those in non‐Western areas are very few. This study analyses the perceived transportation services‐happiness relationship using a social survey of 46 thousand citizens in Seoul, South Korea. How transportation services contribute to happiness is discussed in relation to the auxiliary travel utility through activities/non‐activities on the way to the destination and to the intrinsic utility, which is generated by satisfying mobility instincts, in addition to the derived utility by those activities that are conducted at the destination, the traditional focus in the transportation literature. An analytical model based on partial least squares structural equation modeling estimates the relationship between happiness and the factor of perceived transportation services while controlling for seven factors. Analytical findings are that except for gender, the significance and magnitude of each of the indicators are comparable to those reported in previous studies and as expected, perceived transportation services significantly encourage happiness. Specifically, satisfaction with the pedestrian environment turns out to be more important in increasing happiness than that with other transportation services and between the two pedestrian environment indicators, satisfaction in the residential neighborhood is found to be more important than that in urban centers.