Superstitions, street traffic, and subjective well-being

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Anderson, Michael L.; Lu, Fangwen; Zhang, Yiran; Yang, Jun; Qin, Ping
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; Renmin University of China; Chinese University of Hong Kong; Beijing Jiaotong University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2016.07.005
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 1-10
• 关键词: congestion; happiness; Value of travel time; Value of reliability

摘要

Congestion plays a central role in urban and transportation economics. Existing estimates of congestion costs rely on stated or revealed preferences studies. We explore a complementary measure of congestion costs based on self-reported happiness. Exploiting quasi-random variation in daily congestion in Beijing that arises because of superstitions about the number four, we estimate a strong effect of daily congestion on self-reported happiness. When benchmarking this effect against the relationship between income and self-reported happiness we compute implied congestion costs that are several times larger than conventional estimates. Several factors, including the value of reliability and externalities on non-travelers, can reconcile our alternative estimates with the existing literature. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.