Temporal well-being: a central dimension of sustainable lifestyles?

In this paper the concept of temporal well-being is developed, as well as related to ecological sustainability. Temporal well-being is, contrary to objective measures as quantity of leisure time, a subjective concept aiming to catch the role time plays in people’s lives. We argue for the existence of at least two distinct dimensions of temporal well-being. One is time pressure and the other is a concept we call time use satisfaction which has to do with the individual’s subjective valuation of how ones time is actually used.

In the second part of the paper we analyze the links between temporal well-being and ecologically sustainable lifestyles. Simple bivariate analyses illustrate that short work hours and commuting time can have positive consequences for both temporal well-being and greenhouse gas emissions.