How commuting (time) satisfaction is influenced by changes in employment status while accounting for satisfaction with life domains? A European Analysis

While many studies focus on the effect of change in travel-related characteristics or a change in residential location on travel satisfaction, surprisingly, no studies have yet focused on the effect of change in employment status on travel satisfaction, or in this case on satisfaction with commuting time (CTS). Work activity is also an important anchor point around which other daily activities and trips are organized. Therefore, we analysed this relationship with CTS by performing a multivariate logistic regression analysis using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2013 dataset for 32 countries. These countries were further classified into well developed and less-developed countries. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that analyses the link between employment variables, satisfaction with life and life domains on CTS for 170,750 respondents. The study concludes that part-time employees and employees with a permanent contract have higher satisfaction levels with their commuting time compared to their counterparts. Likewise, employees who did not change their employment status have higher CTS than those who experienced a change from unemployment to now being employed (i.e. from zero commutes to now commuting to work). Furthermore, the likelihood of being satisfied with commuting time verses not satisfied increases with the increase in satisfaction with the other life domains. Our analysis also includes interactions between social networks, emotions and trust on CTS. Future studies should include more employment-related variables for a robust examination of the effect of change in employment status on travel satisfaction.