Emerging longitudinal research on the relationship between commuting mode and psychological wellbeing draws exclusively from cities in developed countries and the findings are not consistent. Our study contributes to the evidence base from urban China, where rapid urban growth has raised great concerns for urbanites’ commuting problems and psychological stress risks. Drawing upon the China Health and Nutrition Survey (2006–2015), we followed a quasi-longitudinal design to examine changes in commuting mode and the associations with long-term psychological stress. Crucially, the neighbourhood-level urbanicity scale was incorporated to analyse geographic variations in the commuting-stress relationship over time. The results show that maintaining car commuting and long-duration active commuting were associated with lower levels of psychological stress, while long-duration motorised commuting trips by car or public transport were predictive of higher stress levels. Moreover, high-urbanicity areas involved more active commuting trips and short motorised commuting trips, which were beneficial to long-term psychological wellbeing. In contrast, the commuting-related stress risks were noticeable in medium urbanicity areas, where the commuting duration by public transport was extremely high. Based on the socio-institutional context of urban growth in China, we recommend that urban governments should change the focus from expanding urban development land to improving urban amenities and urbanites’ wellbeing.

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The causal impact of the built environment on travel behaviours is a subject of debate. This debate especially concerns the independent effect of the built environment on the observed travel patterns after taking into account residential self-selection arising from pre-existing travel-related attitude. This study argues that travel attitude varies over time, and thus, is also reshaped by residential built environment and interrelated with residents? travel behaviours. Focusing on the event of residential relocation in the Netherlands, this study longitudinally investigated the interrelations between travel mode choices and preferences before, immediately after and a year after the relocation. Results from the random-intercept cross-lagged panel models substantiated the residential self-selection based on the pre-relocation preferences for motorised means of transport, including cars and public transport. Moreover, travel mode preferences varied to a greater extent than travel mode use pre?post relocation, and especially, frequent use of public transport or bicycles stimulated by the new place of residence had a one-year lagged effect on developing the mode preference. Therefore, the structural role of residential built environment manifests as (re)shaping travel mode choices as well as mode-specific preferences in the process of residential relocation.@en

Residential self-selection studies argue that pre-existing travel-related attitude overshadows the role of changes in residential built environment in (re)shaping travel behaviours. Our study contributes to this self-selection argument by including family- and job-related life events as another self-selection source, and accounting for the reverse causality from built environment to travel attitude as opposed to the attitude-induced self-selection. Using a two-wave sample of 1,038 Dutch residents before and after the relocation, we developed structural equation models to investigate longitudinal relationships between changes in residential built environment and job-housing distances, the occurrence of life events, and changes in commuting mode choices and preferences pre-post relocation. Results supported residential self-selection arising from pre-existing preferences for car and public transport commuting, while residents lowered the active commuting preference after moving to a more suburban neighbourhood. Life events concurrent with residential relocation, such as childbirth and job changes, also underlay greater demand for car use.

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This thesis has investigated the relationship between daily commuting behaviours and long-term subjective wellbeing from a longitudinal perspective. The underlying problem that motivated the thesis is the inconsistent research evidence on the commuting-wellbeing relationship, and more importantly, the insufficient theoretical conceptualisation of this relationship. As a response to the gap between theoretical understandings and empirical research, this thesis used a processual approach to frame the commuting-wellbeing relationship as an interdependent process over time. To operationalise this processual approach, two ways forward were proposed for longitudinal research, namely retrieving the upstream process that leads to changes in commuting behaviours and enriching the contextual understanding of commuting-wellbeing relationships. The upstream process of commuting changes pertains to the reason for people to (not) change their commuting behaviours, while the contextual understanding relates to the commuting-wellbeing relationship as time- and place-specific. Following these two ways forward, the empirical analysis of this thesis drew upon the nationwide panel data from China, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to longitudinally investigate the relationships between commuting behaviours and subjective wellbeing over time. The aim of this thesis is not to identify a unidirectional commuting-wellbeing causality uniform to the general population and across research areas, but to acknowledge, operationalise and better understand the interdependent commuting-wellbeing relationships situated in the life courses of people and the socio-spatial contexts of places.@en

Research on the experienced utility of commuting time is dominated by an individualistic view of choice concerning the trade-offs between long commutes and job- or housing-related benefits. The widely discussed phenomenon of the commuting paradox shows that individuals systematically report worse subjective wellbeing as commuting time increases over time, indicating the incomplete trade-offs and net disutility for long commutes at the individual level. This paper takes a household perspective and conducts one of the first longitudinal studies on the gendered relationship between commuting time and subjective wellbeing in China. Drawing upon the China Health and Nutrition Survey between 2006 and 2015, we used seemingly unrelated regression models and fixed-effect models not only to compare the within-individual effect but also to investigate the spill-over effect of commuting time on life satisfaction between matched samples of husbands and wives. We additionally examined the role of preschool-aged children and co-residence with their grandparents in the gendered commuting-wellbeing relationship. The results supported the individual-level commuting paradox, considering that both partners had lower levels of life satisfaction with the increase of their own commuting time. Interestingly, husbands’ life satisfaction was more negatively affected by wives’ commuting time than vice versa, while wives’ commuting utility was more related to the great time pressure from childcare and the social support from extended family members. Our research findings have implications for urban planning and governance policies which aim at mitigating job-housing mismatch, delivering accessible childcare services and transforming gendered social norms.

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Working from home (WFH) was prevalent among previous daily commuters during the COVID-19 pandemic and is expected to continue in post-COVID-19 society. By using WFH enforced by the UK government during the pandemic as a real-world experiment, our study investigates the relationship between switching from commuting to WFH, and subjective wellbeing (SWB). Particular interest lies in determining the extent to which this relationship depends on homeworkers' commuting behaviours prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. The data we used is from a COVID-19 panel survey on UK workers who were born in 1970. Results from the between-individual analysis and fixed-effect analysis show that the transition to WFH was not indicative of life satisfaction but it was conducive to affective wellbeing in the short term. This positive effect on affective wellbeing became insignificant after specific experiences of WFH were taken into account; that is, positive homeworking experiences were a result of strong social support, healthy daily lifestyles and stable financial circumstances during the pandemic. Crucially, the impact of switching to WFH on SWB was moderated by the pre-pandemic commuting behaviour. Previous long-distance commuters (one-way commuting distance >30 miles) reported better affective wellbeing when they could work from home, while commuters who had frequently walked or cycled to work had worse SWB outcomes after switching to WFH.

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With great concern over the health-promoting environment worldwide, there is a growing body of research into the neighborhood effects on health beyond the sole focus on individual socioeconomic disadvantages and lifestyle risks. Our study contributes to neighborhood health research by investigating the combined effects of multi-dimensional neighborhood environmental characteristics and recreational physical activity under different geographic contexts on residents' self-rated health. Drawing upon a health survey conducted in suburban Shanghai in 2017, we employ a series of multilevel models to examine how the multi-scale environmental and behavioral factors are related to residents' self-rated physical and mental health, respectively. The results show that the greening rate of the community, rather than accessibility to large-scale urban parks, is a significant indicator of self-rated health for suburban residents. Subjective evaluations on neighborhood safety and air pollution exposure are significantly associated with residents' physical and mental health, while neighborhood attachment matters more for mental health. Outdoor recreational exercises, especially in the environment of neighborhood green space, are conducive to better physical health, while indoor physical activity shows weaker and insignificant health benefits. These findings offer a promising way for public health policymakers and urban planners to implement place-based health interventions and develop health-supportive neighborhoods.

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Enhancing the spatial accessibility to medical facilities is an important public health strategy in many countries. However, it is not clear whether enhancing spatial accessibility is capable of addressing medical care issues due to the complexity of individuals' health-seeking behavior. This study draws from Andersen's behavioral model to identify enabling factors in the associations of spatial accessibility to medical facilities and socio-institutional factors with individuals' health-seeking behavior. Logistic regression and mixed geographically weighted regression techniques are used to analyze large-scale health survey data collected in Shanghai, China. The results show that spatial accessibility to medical facilities plays a significant role in health-seeking behaviors, but the mechanism at play is complicated, involving people's preference for high-grade hospitals and the demand for easy access to public transit. Moreover, there is spatial heterogeneity in the relationship between spatial accessibility to medical facilities and health-seeking behaviors. Especially, people who live in the inner suburb of Shanghai have worse access to these facilities and thus are more likely to perform self-treatment compared with urban residents. Moreover, localized contexts formed by the interweaving of spatial accessibility and socio-institutional factors, such as registered residence status (hukou), complicate the association between spatial accessibility and health-seeking behaviors.

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The relationship between commuting behaviours and subjective wellbeing has been fascinating scholars of different disciplines. Especially in the last decade, longitudinal research designs have made great progress in identifying causality in the commuting-wellbeing relationship by focusing on within-individual variations over time. However, the results from longitudinal research are far from consistent and, therefore, questions remain unanswered regarding the association of motorised and long commuting journeys with subjective wellbeing in the long term. The aim of this literature review is to account for why these inconsistencies occur and to provide some avenues for future longitudinal research. We achieve this by developing theoretical conceptualisations of the commuting-wellbeing relationship from an interdisciplinary perspective, which drives the subsequent critical review of empirical longitudinal evidence based on nation/city-wide panel surveys, intervention experiments and relocation events. We recommend furture research to distinguish and integrate different processes that lead to changes in commuting behaviours, including environmental changes, information or participatory interventions, and the event of residential relocation together with other life events and long-term processes in life. This processual thinking will enrich the temporal scope of longitudinal research and contribute to a better understanding of the interdependent relationship between daily commuting behaviours and long-term subjective wellbeing.

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Air pollution and noise are both ubiquitous environmental stressors that pose great threats to public health. Emerging evidence has noticed the combined health risks caused by the coexistence of traffic-related air pollutants and noise in the residential context. However, less is known about how mobile individuals are simultaneously exposed to multiple sources of air pollution and noise, and thus respond with more acute psychological responses beyond the residence. This study examines the co-exposures to fine particles (PM_2.5) and noise across spatiotemporal contexts where the concurrent exposures are jointly associated with momentary psychological stress. An innovative research protocol, including GPS-equipped activity-travel diaries, air pollutant and noise sensors, and ecological momentary assessment, was adopted to collect real-time data from a sample of residents in Beijing, China. The results showed a minor correlation between PM_2.5 and noise exposures after accounting for individual mobility and the spatiotemporal dynamics of these two environmental pollutants. Further, exposure to PM_2.5 was more associated with momentary psychological stress given the insignificant independent effect and the weak moderating effect of noise exposure. Three specific spatiotemporal contexts involving the health risks of co-exposures were delineated, including morning rush hours and traveling by public transits with intensified stress risks caused by combined exposures to air pollution and noise, workplaces with counteracting stress effect of both exposures, and evening time at home with stress-induced air pollution and stress-relieving social noise. In conclusion, the mobility-based and context-aware analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of the associations of co-exposures to environmental pollution and synchronous psychological stress in space and time.

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Environmental justice is a crucial environmental and social problem. Previous research in the cities of developed countries has found that ethnic minorities and low-income people were disproportionately exposed to the residential environment with more serious environmental risks. This study proposed a transition from the residence-based perspective to a mobility-based and context-aware approach to reinterpret environmental justice with a focus on the air pollution issue in urban China. A novel research protocol combining geographic ecological momentary assessment and portable air pollutant sensors was developed to collect and analyze real-time data of air pollution exposure and psychological stress for residents living in the same residential neighborhood of Beijing, China. The results show that residents of different types of housing were exposed to varying PM_2.5 concentrations although they experienced similar levels of air pollution in their residential neighborhoods. Residents of public low-rent housing were the disadvantaged group because of their limited mobility, exposure to serious air pollution at home, and insensitive stress responses to air pollution. These findings not only uncover the mobility-based environmental justice issue in the context of government-led and egalitarianism-pursuing urban China, but also provide references for the residential mix policy on how to narrow the disparity in environmental pollution exposure from the perspective of human mobility.

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