Alia Asmat1,*, Ghulam Abbas Ghazi Gajani2 and Ghinasha Choudary1
Affiliation: 1Department of Psychology, University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan and 2Department of Economics, Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water & Marine Sciences, Uthal, Pakistan
Email: [email protected]
Abstract: Introduction: Commuting can be described as non-work related activity outside of the paid work hours. Presently, an effort was made to evaluate Trade Offs between commuting time and daily life activities. Design: Secondary data analysis. Subjects and Methods: Sample of this research was taken from Federal Bureau of Statistics; Pakistan Time Use Survey 2007. Researchers have calculated all six activities from the given list (PTUS classification) of 144 activities performed by the commuters. Initially we have calculated commuting time from travel time of those participants who travel from home to the work place. Further, data was analyzed through Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR). Results: Commuting time and working hours are significantly and negatively affecting all six activities performed by the commuters on daily basis. Regarding gender difference across six activities found that female spent more time on caring child and elderly, personal care and physical activities however, they spent less time on sleeping, leisure and social-cultural activities as compare to men. Daily time spent on child and elderly care and sleeping time decrease as the age of the commuter increase. It was also documented that divorced individual spent more time on personal care but less on sleep. Additionally sleep and other activities are concerned people who are getting money from other members of the family and remittance sleep more. More over sleeping time also decreased as educational grades increase. Further, current analysis revealed that level of education and time spent on different activities, individual educational grade primary but below middle and inter but below degree spent more than people with no education. Individual with metric and under inter spent more time on personal care. As for as leisure time is concerned more educated spend more time on leisure activities as compare to uneducated. Only people with inter education spent time on physical care activities. Researchers supposed minimum commuting time is 60 minutes from the 1440 total allocated minutes per day. In present study while keeping the 60 minutes constant we have found urban and rural trade Offs; if 30 minutes increased in the commuting time it will decrease 2.3 minutes from sleep, 4.49 from child and elderly care, 3.5 from personal care, 5.03 from leisure and 2.03 minutes from sociocultural activities in urban commuters. Leisure time is more compromised than other activities. In rural 2.24 sleep, 4.79 child and elderly care, 3.61 from personal care, 5.81 from leisure, 5.21 physical care and 1.95 from sociocultural activities. Conclusion: This research would provide a baseline to the upcoming researches to established associations between travel time, mental and physical health issues as the cost of commuting in Pakistan.
Keywords: Commuting; Recreation; Model; Pakistan; Variable.