Review and assessment of self-reports of travel-related emotional wellbeing

Introduction: Travel behavior research has only started to address how travel affects emotional wellbeing. The development of measurement methods is an important goal of this research. Methods: A review and assessment of methods of measuring travel-related emotional wellbeing is presented guided by a conceptual framework specifying what is measured (cognitive evaluations, emotional responses, or moods), the way it is measured (proactively, instantaneously, or retrospectively), and when it is measured (before, during, or after travel). Anticipated, current, residual and recalled moods are the objects of the measurement. Only studies of commuting or other types of daily travel are addressed. Results: We find that no research has measured anticipated moods, some research has measured current moods before, after and during travel, and most research has measured recalled moods. Conclusions: The most valid and reliable method is to measure current mood instantaneously at several points in time, before, during, and after travel. A measure of emotional wellbeing can then be obtained by objective aggregation. An approximate more feasible method is to retrospectively measure recalled moods for a given specified time period that may not only include travel. The available methods for measuring recalled moods have acceptable psychometric properties but research is needed to validate these methods by comparing the results to an objective aggregation of instantaneous measures of current mood at different points in time.