Environmental differences in how Americans use time: The case for subjective and objective indicators

This article examines several objective and subjective environmental indicators as they relate to how people spend their time. Contrary to the greater attention and confidence afforded objective indicators by policy makers and analysts, subjective environmental indicators emerge as far more predictive of what people do in their everyday lives than objective indicators of the environment in which they live. These objective indicators include not only community size and type (i.e., urban versus suburban), but region of the country, season of the year and general climatic conditions. The results are interpreted as supporting other recent research that has found a solid and basic (if not inevitable) correspondence between attitudes and behavior. The correspondence between the enjoyment people say they derive from activities and the time they spend on those activities persists after controls for other demographic predictors of time; as expected, the relation tends to be stronger for free time activities than for more obligatory activities. Some of the limitations of these conclusions and some needed directions for future research are also discussed.