IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/uctcwp/qt5fs1d377.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Commuting Stress, Ridesharing, and Gender: Analyses from the 1993 State of the Commute Study in Southern California

Author

Listed:
  • Novaco, Raymond W.
  • Collier, Cheryl

Abstract

A stressful nature of expose to traffic congestion in automobile commuting has been demonstrated in previous quasi-experimental research that has been measurement-intensive but conducted with relatively small samples. The present study examined commuting stress in automobile travel with a large representative sample (N = 2591) in southern California through telephone survey. Commuting stress was found to be significantly associated with distance and duration of the commute, controlling for age and income. As predicted, the stressful effects of long distance commutes (> 20 miles) were further moderated by gender, as women in such commutes perceive much greater commuting stress spillover to work and home. Some hypothesized stress-mitigating effects of ridesharing were found, as full-time ridesharers were significantly less bothered by traffic congestion and more satisfied with their commutes than solo drivers. In analyses of prospective adoption by solo drivers of alternative commuting modes, it was found that the perception of one's commute as having a negative impact on family life had a very significant effect on the inclination to try carpooling and train/rail, beyond the effect associated with distance itself. Commuting stress is discussed as an external cost of traffic congestion that is internalized by the solo driver. Marketing strategies for alternative modes of commuting might increase their effectiveness by highlighting stress consequences, especially negative impacts on family life.

Suggested Citation

  • Novaco, Raymond W. & Collier, Cheryl, 1994. "Commuting Stress, Ridesharing, and Gender: Analyses from the 1993 State of the Commute Study in Southern California," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt5fs1d377, University of California Transportation Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt5fs1d377
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5fs1d377.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nie, Peng & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2018. "Commute time and subjective well-being in urban China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 188-204.
    2. Roger L. Mackett, 2022. "Gender, mental health and travel," Transportation, Springer, vol. 49(6), pages 1891-1920, December.
    3. Karlström, Anders & Isacsson, Gunnar, 2009. "Is sick absence related to commuting travel time? - Swedish Evidence Based on the Generalized Propensity Score Estimator," Working Papers 2010:3, Swedish National Road & Transport Research Institute (VTI).
    4. Patricia Mokhtarian & Francis Papon & Matthieu Goulard & Marco Diana, 2015. "What makes travel pleasant and/or tiring? An investigation based on the French National Travel Survey," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(6), pages 1103-1128, November.
    5. Junghwan Kim & Mei-Po Kwan, 2018. "Beyond Commuting: Ignoring Individuals’ Activity-Travel Patterns May Lead to Inaccurate Assessments of Their Exposure to Traffic Congestion," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-20, December.
    6. Christopher D. Higgins & Matthias N. Sweet & Pavlos S. Kanaroglou, 2018. "All minutes are not equal: travel time and the effects of congestion on commute satisfaction in Canadian cities," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(5), pages 1249-1268, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt5fs1d377. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/itucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.