Relationship Between Satisfaction with Daily Travel and Subjective Well-Being in Three Urban Areas in Sweden : Description of Survey Questionnaire, Sample Characteristics and Preliminary Results

Surveys of satisfaction with travel are currently conducted as a means of determining the degree to which public transport meet various travel needs. A policy aim in the industry supported by the government is that more people should experience that public transport make their daily lives easier, for instance by increasing access to education and the labour market, and by contributing towards a better environment. This requires that public transport becomes tuned to various groups of citizens’ travel needs. It has been proposed that the possibility of travelling in a satisfactory way is important for the well-being of people. The first aim of the project described in this report was to develop and test a measurement instrument, the Satisfaction with Travel Scale (STS), that may help to understand how the daily work commute is evaluated by people living in different urban areas of Sweden (Stockholm, Göteborg, and Malmö), and how their evaluations are related to characteristics of the work commute including travel time, travel mode, trip chaining, and activities performed during travel (multi-tasking). The second aim was to investigate the relationship between STS and well-being measured by retrospective reports of the frequency and intensity of positive and negative affects during a past period, as well as by means of judgments of satisfaction with life in general. Sample characteristics, design and development of the survey questionnaire, survey procedure, descriptive results from a pilot study, and descriptive results from the main study are presented. In total, 996 respondents answered the questionnaire. An English translation of the questionnaire is attached in an appendix