Psychology› Social Psychology› Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction

Well-being economics — Commuting time

Submitted 2026-10-22

Field: Psychology › Social PsychologyType: No effect foundArea: well-being economicsTarget: Commuting timeStage: full study

Hypothesis

Longer commutes would be associated with lower subjective well-being, as earlier studies had reported.

What failed

Using a range of fixed-effects ordered estimators, the authors found no general evidence that longer commutes go with lower well-being, unlike earlier papers.

Broken assumption

Commuting longer reliably lowers people's life satisfaction.

Why

The abstract attributes nothing specific; it is mainly a comparison of estimators, and reports that linear and ordered fixed-effects models agree.

From the published paper: Dickerson et al. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2014. ↗CC BY

Research ideas from this failure

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Links in published research

Where this experiment's genes are known to matter outside its own research area, and the papers behind those links. Sources: Open Targets Platform and Europe PMC.