Citation

Useche SA, Marin C, Llamazares FJ. Transp. Res. F Traffic Psychol. Behav. 2023; 95: 143-159.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.trf.2023.04.005

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Although most of the literature on stress-related factors uniformly points out several negative health, performance, and safety issues as potential outcomes attributable to a prolonged exposition to stressful situations, the applications of these assumptions to the field of urban mobility (and more specifically to commuting) remain considerably scarce. Indeed, while commuters worldwide usually face daily situations such as traffic jams, dearth of transport choices, crowded public transport services, long trips, and road conflicts, there are only a few studies that have methodologically addressed the issue of commuting stress (CS).

Aim
This paper aims to present in detail the development and validation of the Multimodal Commuting Stress Scale (MCSS), a self-report tool for assessing commuting stress-related factors among urban commuters of different modalities.

Methods
This cross-sectional study retrieved data from a nationwide sample of 1,429 commuters (aged between 18 and 78; average 34.42 years) from all 17 Spanish regions. Data were analyzed through Structural Equation Model-based competitive Confirmatory Factor Analyses, thus testing the psychometric performance of the scale under different structural assumptions, as well as its reliability, consistency, and validity insights.

Results
The outcomes of this study suggest that the developed MCSS has a clear four-dimensional structure, an optimal set of factor loadings, fair goodness-of-fit indexes, and satisfactory internal consistency and reliability. Additionally, validity analyses show that commuting stress factors measured through the MCSS have coherent associations with both physical/mental health indexes and trip-related factors, while it also discriminates commuting stress scores by sex, age, and commuting modality.

Conclusion
All in sum, the findings of this study endorse the suitability of the Multimodal Commuting Stress Scale for measuring stress-related factors affecting urban commuters, as well as to make comparisons among different groups of them.

Language: en

Keywords

Commuters; Commuting stress; MCSS; Physical and mental health; Road users; Self-report tools; Urban transport