Patricia Mokhtarian (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Join NCTSPM for this Transportation Speaker Series event, featuring Dr. Patricia Mokhtarian, Susan G. and Christopher D. Pappas Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Mokhtarian will be speaking on the topic of "Well-being and Travel: Retrospect and Prospect".

Although the improvement of well-being is often an implicitly-assumed goal of many, if not most, policies, the study of subjective well-being (SWB) and travel has so far been confined to a relatively small segment of the travel behavior community.  Accordingly, one main purpose of this talk is to introduce a larger share of the community to some fundamental SWB-related concepts and their application in transportation research, with the goal of attracting others to this rewarding area of study.  At the same time, however, I also hope to offer some useful reflections to those already working in this field.  After presenting some basic issues of terminology and measurement of SWB, I present four conceptual models relating travel and subjective well-being.  Following one of those models, I review five ways in which travel can influence well-being.  I conclude by examining some challenges associated with assessing the impacts of travel on well-being, as well as challenges associated with applying what we learn to policy.

Patricia Mokhtarian is the Susan G and Christopher D Pappas Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech.  Prior to joining Tech in 2013, she spent 23 years at the University of California, Davis, where she was a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, associate director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, and founding chair of the interdisciplinary MS/PhD program in Transportation Technology and Policy.  Dr. Mokhtarian has specialized in the study of travel behavior for more than 30 years, and has authored or co-authored more than 200 refereed journal articles, technical reports, and other publications.  She is the current chair of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research.  She is a North American area editor of the journal Transportation, and is on the editorial boards of Transportation Research Part A, Transport Policy, Transportation Letters, the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, the European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, and Travel Behavior and Society.  Her PhD is from Northwestern University.  Dr. Mokhtarian's Google Scholar profile may be seen at: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=84jTPKEAAAAJ.