It’s a means of getting from one place to another – most often from the home to the office. Unless we all make the switch to working from home on a permanent basis, the commute is something we’ll have to perform.
Do brits enjoy their commute?
It might come as a surprise, then that a survey has uncovered that a significant portion of Brits actually enjoy the commute. According to a survey commissioned by Devitt Insurance, 46% of commuters enjoy themselves, up from 37% before the lockdown started.
Does it make them stressed?
Around a third of respondents (33%) report feelings of stress resulting from their commutes. Of these, 7% feel stressed immediately upon setting out – others take an hour or more to become stressed, which suggests that the time taken influences the overall amount of stress felt, and that longer commutes are more stressful.
Has this changed post-covid?
The proportion of people who enjoy their commute has, according to the survey, actually grown. Before the lockdown, just 19% of people enjoyed their commute ‘a little’, while 20% enjoyed it ‘a lot’. These two figures have risen, respectively to 22% and 26%. Conversely, the proportion of commuters who didn’t enjoy their commute, or didn’t enjoy it ‘at all’ (these being two separate categories), has slumped – in the first case from 11% to 6%, in the second from 5% to 3%.
This might be a consequence of selection. People who enjoy commuting are more likely to make the effort to continue commuting, and thus they make up a greater proportion when commuting becomes optional. Moreover, a change in the means of commuting, for example a shift away from public transport, might play a role in making the trip more enjoyable.
Tom Warsop, Marketing Manager at Devitt Insurance, had this to say: “While the stresses of daily life are clearly affecting workers as they head out on their commutes, it was interesting to see that enjoyment levels have actually risen for those workers who are already heading back to their workplaces.
“Whether it is the novelty of a new mode of transport or the impact of going back to a sense of normality, albeit with new guidelines and restrictions, the research highlights that there will be positives to be found in getting back out on the road.”
Does the reaction change according to region or age group?
The change in the proportion of people who enjoyed their commute is more or less consistent across every age group. Both the young and the old are enjoying themselves more, although those older than seventy are likely to become stressed early on in their journey. There are also distinct geographical differences – those in the South West of England, for example, are more likely to feel positively about their commute than those in the North East.