World Happiness Report | EPFL Graph Search

The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various (quality of) life factors. As of March 2023, Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world six times in a row. The report is a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a global initiative of the United Nations. The report primarily uses data from the Gallup World Poll. Each annual report is available to the public to download on the World Happiness Report website. The Editors of the 2020 report are John F. Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve. Associate Editors are Lara Aknin, Shun Wang, and Haifang Huang. History In July 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution 65/309 Happiness: Towards a Holistic Definition of Development inviting member countries to measure the happiness of their people

Happiness and Travel Mode Switching: Findings from a Swiss Public Transportation Experiment

Michel Bierlaire, Vincent Kaufmann, Regina Witter

We present results from a recent experiment conducted in Switzerland that studies the effects of a temporary change in the mode of travel to work on travel happiness and mode switching. The primary aim is to study the dynamics in travel satisfaction ratings obtained before and after the intervention. Two behavioral mechanisms driving the change in satisfaction ratings are analyzed. The first one is that satisfaction ratings are influenced by reference points. The second mechanism is that satisfaction ratings are affected by cognitive awareness, whereby the disruption of routine travel conditions makes people think more fully about their travel happiness with different modes of transportation.

2012

Happiness and travel behavior modification

Michel Bierlaire

We develop and test a new approach for measuring travel well-being that accounts for the routine nature of travel. We postulate that when people are in a routine, they dont fully consider their travel happiness. Only when people evaluate their options and reconsider their decisions will they think of their travel happiness. Consequently, a travel happiness measure collected at the time of decision-making might be a more relevant measure of their happiness that correlates better with behavior. To test this hypothesis, an experiment was conducted at three employment centers in Switzerland requiring habitual car drivers to switch temporarily to public transportation for their commute to work. The idea is that after the public transportation trial, the participants would think of their happiness as they reconsider their mode choice decisions. Participants travel happiness, perceptions, attitudes, and mode choice were measured before and after the intervention. Two main findings emerged from the analysis: first, the measures of happiness with the commute by car collected before and after the public transportation trial were significantly different, with generally a greater happiness with car reported after the experiment. Using the happiness measures as additional indicators of utility, a greater correlation was found between utility and the after measure, which supports the hypothesis that the measure of travel happiness collected when people evaluate their options is a more relevant measure for situations involving decision-making than that collected when people are in a routine. The implications for the measurement of well-being could apply to other domains involving routine behavior. Second, a number of participants continued to commute by public transportation after the required trial, which suggests that a temporary change in behavior might be effective in inducing behavioral modification or at least in affecting peoples choice sets. This has policy implications for public transportation agencies or institutions that are trying to encourage car drivers to shift to public transportation.

2008

Does it matter for us that my partner or I commute ? Spatial mobility for job reasons and the quality of conjugal relationships in France, Germany, and Switzerland

Vincent Kaufmann, Gil Viry

Spatial mobility has often been considered a detrimental factor for families for various reasons, stemming from increasing stress, unpredictability of daily life, increasing gender inequalities, and decreasing investment in parenting and partnerships due to time and space constraints. This contribution considers how daily long-distance and weekly commuting, frequent absence from home, and long-distance relationships for job-related reasons affect conjugal quality. To investigate this issue, we used data from a large European survey on job mobility and family life (JobMob), based on 2,914 individuals reporting a stable partnership and living in France, Germany, and Switzerland. We first empirically defined eight positions in the social space according to the current mobility practice from each partner and major socio-demographic variables. We then explored the extent to which those positions affect conjugal satisfaction and conjugal conflict within the three national contexts, complementing the analyses by including the process by which one became mobile. We found that job mobility had no significant effect on conjugal quality. Lower quality of conjugal relations rather concerned mobile people who experienced decisions to become mobile both negatively and collectively. We further discuss the importance of our results for understanding the functioning of contemporary couples facing mobility demands.

2010

Happiness and travel behavior modification

Michel Bierlaire

2008