Periodicity and Variability in Daily Activity Satisfaction: Toward a Space-Time Modeling of Subjective Well-Being

• Published in: Annals of the American Association of Geographers Vol. ahead-of-print; no. ahead-of-print; pp. 1 - 21
• Main Authors: Ma, Jing, Dong, Guanpeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Routledge 14.09.2023; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Activities of daily living; Air pollution; bienestar subjetivo; Contextual effects; Daily; daily activity participation; efectos contextuales geográficos; Equilibrium; geographical contextual effects; Heterogeneity; Migrants; Mobility; modelo espaciotemporal; modelos multinivel; multilevel models; participación en las actividades diarias; Periodicity; Psychological factors; space-time model; Statistical methods; Stochastic models; Stochastic processes; Subjective experiences; subjective well-being; Time use; Well being; 主观幸福感; 地理背景影响; 多层次模型; 时空模型
• ISSN: 2469-4452; 2469-4460
• DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2023.2206476

Understanding how geographical environments influence peoples' subjective experiences of daily activities is of great potential for improving subjective well-being (SWB), a subject that is presently limited by a lack of available data and proper statistical methods. Focusing on Beijing and using a unique data set that linked residents' seven-day mobility trajectories at a fine spatiotemporal resolution to their complete activity participation and momentary well-being, this article investigates the temporal dynamics of and geographical contextual effects on SWB of daily activities. We developed a unified spatial multilevel stochastic process model to simultaneously capture periodicity, stochastic dynamics, and individual heterogeneity effects. Results show that momentary SWB has a twenty-four-hour periodicity and evolves stochastically around individual equilibrium states depending on key life-circumstance variables. Migrants and low-income residents tend to have lower equilibrium states than their counterparts. Real-time air pollution exposure significantly lowers daily activity satisfaction levels, and an inverted-U-shaped relationship exists between city vibrancy and satisfaction.