Travel and Subjective Well-Being: A Focus on Findings, Methods and Future Research Needs

TLDR

Subjective well‑being has recently attracted attention in transport research, yet studies remain nascent, largely focusing on travel satisfaction and hedonic perspectives while overlooking eudaimonic aspects and neighborhood‑based travel options that influence well‑being. The paper reviews travel‑well‑being studies, emphasizing results, methods, and research gaps. Travel influences well‑being through experiences during destination‑oriented trips, activity participation enabled by travel, activities during travel, trips where travel itself is the activity, potential travel, and long‑term decisions such as residential location. The review reveals only a subset of travel‑well‑being interactions and proposes a research agenda for future studies.

Abstract

Subjectively experienced well-being has recently attracted increased attention in transport and mobility studies. However, these studies are still in their infancy and many of the multifarious links between travel behaviour and well-being are still under-examined; most studies only focus on one aspect of this link (i.e. travel satisfaction). In this paper, we give an overview of studies concerning travel and well-being, focusing on results, methods and gaps in present research. We suggest that travel behaviour affects well-being through experiences during (destination-oriented) travel, activity participation enabled by travel, activities during (destination-oriented) travel, trips where travel is the activity and through potential travel (or motility). The majority of empirical studies to date have been based on hedonic views of well-being, where pleasure and satisfaction are seen as the ultimate goal in life. They have paid little attention to eudaimonic views of well-being, which emphasise the realisation of one's true potential, although this form of well-being can also be influenced by travel behaviour. We also argue that longer-term decisions, such as residential location choices, can affect well-being through travel. Travel options differ between different kinds of neighbourhoods, which can result in different levels of (feelings of) freedom and consequently different levels of subjective well-being. Since studies at present only show a subset of the travel behaviour–well-being interactions, we conclude the paper with an agenda for future research.