Commuting — a further stress factor for working people: evidence from the European Community

Abstract

About 100 million workers in the European Community commute to and from work daily. A review of the available data shows that commuting has increased in recent decades as rising car ownership has produced a more dispersed pattern of residential and job locations. In general, average commuting durations are falling, although average commuting distances are increasing as a result of faster commuting modes. However, the number of very long duration journeys have also increased, albeit from a small level. Up to now most research has focused on transport and land use issues, while very few studies have dealt with its impact on health, safety and social life of the workers. The available data indicate commuting to be a stress factor not only because of transport modes, but also by its interference with living and working conditions: namely, reduction of time available for discretionary leisure activities and increased absenteeism at workplace. Long-term effects on health have not been adequately investigated. Well integrated policies and strategies concerning the different aspects of this problem (transport, health, work organization, residential planning) must be developed both at the local and international levels to facilitate adequate solutions for this stressful condition.

Stress perception and commuting

“…In line with results found in the literature, commuting time -our proxy for commuting impedance as used in Wener et al (2003) or Costa et al (1988) -has a significantly positive coefficient in our model: as can be seen from Table V, an increase in commuting time of 1 min (at the mean) decreases the probability of feeling 'relaxed' or 'very relaxed' by 0.1%. 6 An increase of one standard deviation (19 min, see Table II) evaluated at the mean increases the probability of feeling 'stressed' by 2.2%.…”

“…In the literature, various indicators have been used: the most obvious candidates are commuting time (as used e.g. by Wener et al, 2003;Costa et al, 1988) and commuting distance. Since these indicators are usually highly correlated, authors usually use only one measure in empirical specifications, although a single variable cannot capture all dimensions of the commute: for example, people who commute a specific distance are treated equally even if there are major differences in their commuting time, while it is reasonable to assume that commuting 30 km in 30 min is less stressful than commuting the same distance in 1 h. To account for both time and distance, Schaeffer et al (1988) use commuting speed as an indicator, with the drawback that speed does not reflect the actual length of the commute.…”

Commuting and Sickness Absence

“…Furthermore, commuting has been shown to be associated with increased heart rate and blood pressure (Novaco et al, 1979;Schaeffer et al, 1988). Further, commuting translates into shorter sleeping times and sleep disorders (Costa et al, 1988;Walsleben et al, 1999;Hansson et al, 2011), a lower social capital and participation (Mattisson et al, 2015), which has in turn been associated with health outcomes (Putnam, 2000;Lindström, 2004;Besser et al, 2008), negative mood (Gulian et al, 1989), emotional arousal (Hennessy and Wiesenthal, 1997), lower well-being and life satisfaction (Stutzer and Frey, 2008;Roberts et al, 2011;Olsson et al, 2013) as well as higher levels of workplace aggression (Hennessy, 2008), poor concentration levels (Matthews et al, 1991) and a higher risk of mortality (Sandow et al, 2014).…”

A Human Perspective on the Daily Commute: Costs, Benefits and Trade‐offs

“…Costa et al (1988) studied Italian industrial workers and found that commuters (defined as having a journey to work of at least 45 minutes) had restricted free-time and reduced sleeping time.…”