Background: Commuting, transportation from the home to the work place has been claimed to increase the material wealth. Although economy and flexibility to choose where to live and work will improve for the individual, several studies have shown that health become aggravated with increased commuting. One plausible explanation to the negative health is reduced social capital. Aim: Our primary hypothesis is that the longer the commuting time the less time for social participation and thereby a lower social capital. Methods: The study design is cross-sectional and the study material consists of two retrospective data sets collected through questionnaires in 2004 and 2008 (N=21,088 persons; response rate 56 %). Commuting was defined as transportation from the home to the work place, and characterized by duration one way (＜30 min, 30-60 min, ＞1 h) and mode (active, car, public). Active commuting ＜30 min was used as reference category and included all those only walking or cycling. Based on a measure in a former article, social capital was defined as a combination of questions on social participation and generalized trust to other people. Relationships between social capital and the exposure variable will be investigated with log-binomial regression. Results: Has not yet been produced but a primary analysis done with logistic regression (as an indicator, instead of log-binomial regression) seems to shows an association between social participation and increasing commuting time both with car and public, compared to active commuting. Low generalized trust seemed not to be strongly associated with commuting. These resultscould be expected as time spent on commuting should be a influencing factor for social participation, while generalized trust probably are more influenced by other factors. Results will be available to be included in the presentation on Environment and Health - Bridging South, North, East and West 2013.
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