Christopher P Barrington-Leigh
Biographic Data
| ID | 4216185 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher P Barrington-Leigh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher P |
| FAMILY NAME | Barrington-Leigh |
| SIGNATURE | BARRINGTON-LEIGH C P |
| AFFILIATIONS | McGill University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3929-5390 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Experienced climate change impacts help explain subjective well‐being—Evidence from 14 nature‐dependent communities
Climate change profoundly affects well‐being in complex and interconnected ways. However, the relationship between climate change and well‐being has been explored in only a handful of settings, most of which are industrialized. Here, we investigate the association between perceived climate change impacts, their severity and subjective well‐being (measured as life satisfaction) using cross‐culturally comparable first‐hand reports from 2488 partici…
A high-resolution global time series of street-network sprawl
Systems of street networks form a backbone for many aspects of human life and, once laid down, urban streets represent a nearly immutable influence on future urban form and concomitant travel, energy, and social outcomes. Moreover, as humanity is currently passing through its peak urbanization rate, decisions about how to design such networks at the local scale are being made faster than ever before. In this work, we quantify local street connect…
Built environment's main and moderating associations with travel mode choice across trip purposes
Street network connectivity leads to denser urban form in Canadian cities
Dividing Highways
We examine the barrier effects of freeways in California. We analyze the association between freeways and nearby street network connectivity and quantify the frequency and quality of crossings—underpasses or bridges that enable pedestrians and cyclists to cross the freeway. We find that barrier effects are most pronounced in communities of color. We also find that even where crossings exist, they are unpleasant or even hazardous for pedestrians a…
A Public, Open, and Independently-Curated Database of Happiness Coefficients
We present a nascent database of happiness coefficients. This is a synthesis of evidence on the size of improvements to human life experience that can be expected from changing objective, policy-amenable circumstances. The wealth of data on people’s self-reported satisfaction with life in a wide variety of circumstances, from around the world, including respondents undergoing a diversity of changes and life events and subject to a variety of publ…
Life satisfaction and sustainability
The growing maturity of the “science of happiness” raises the prospect of enabling government policy to be more accountable to the measurable subjective experience of the population. In its ideal form, the application of this science promises to inform decision makers about the likely distribution of life satisfaction resulting from any prospective policy, allowing for the selection of more optimal policy. Such “budgeting for wellbeing” invites t…
Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability
Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets. Until recently, there was no broadly accepted framework of interventions that could ignite the transformations needed to achieve these desired targets and goals. As a component of the IPBES Global Assessment, we conducted an iterative expert deliberation pro…
Measuring Progress and Well-Being
The world’s user-generated road map is more than 80% complete
OpenStreetMap, a crowdsourced geographic database, provides the only global-level, openly licensed source of geospatial road data, and the only national-level source in many countries. However, researchers, policy makers, and citizens who want to make use of OpenStreetMap (OSM) have little information about whether it can be relied upon in a particular geographic setting. In this paper, we use two complementary, independent methods to assess the …
More connected urban roads reduce US GHG emissions
We quantify the importance of early action to tackle urban sprawl. We focus on the long-term nature of infrastructure decisions, specifically local roadways, which can lock in greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come. The location and interconnectedness of local roadways form a near-permanent backbone for the future layout of land parcels, buildings, and transportation options. We provide new estimates of the environmental impact of low-conne…
The impact of daily weather conditions on life satisfaction
Life Satisfaction among Aboriginal Peoples in the Canadian Prairies
Subjective measures of overall quality of life are built in to numerous surveys in Canada and around the world, and are increasingly analyzed and used as indicators of human well-being and social progress. Yet, even in Canada, federal surveys exclude Aboriginal peoples on-reserve and, in general, there are very few data sources on life satisfaction among Aboriginal respondents. We report on two exceptional surveys that do solicit life satisfactio…
A century of sprawl in the United States
Significance Urban development patterns in the 20th century have been increasingly typified by urban sprawl, which exacerbates climate change, energy and material consumption, and public health challenges. We construct the first long-run, high-resolution time series of street-network sprawl in the United States. We find that even in the absence of a coordinated policy effort, new developments have already turned the corner toward less sprawl. Ini…
The Short-Run Household, Industrial, and Labour Impacts of the Quebec Carbon Market
Resistance to the implementation of greenhouse gas pricing policies comes in part from fears about the concentrated impacts on certain industries, certain regions, and on less affluent households. These distributional concerns are valid and, to be fair, policy can accommodate some transitional measures to soften the impact of sudden policy changes. However, the carbon pricing policy recently instituted in Quebec, in partnership with California un…
The Quebec Convergence and Canadian Life Satisfaction, 1985–2008
Self-reported life satisfaction is increasingly measured in government and private surveys around the world. In Canada, life satisfaction questions have not been asked in a consistent manner over time, but the accumulated set of data since 1985, along with recent surveys with repeated structure, now facilitates an analysis of regional changes. Those two and a half decades reveal a significant increase in life satisfaction in the province of Quebe…
Prosocial spending and well-being
This research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: Human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending). In Study 1, survey data from 136 countries were examined and showed that prosocial spending is associated with greater happiness around the world, in poor and rich countries alike. To test for causality, in Studies 2a and 2b, we used exper…
Viewpoint
Increasing attention is being paid in academic, policy, and public arenas to subjective measures of well‐being. This promising trend represents a shift towards measuring positive outcomes in psychology and greater realism in the study of economic behaviour. We describe the main measures of subjective well‐being (SWB) and provide examples of policy‐relevant research findings, including new accountings of the differences in individual‐level SWB ass…
Prosocial spending and well-being
This research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: Human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending). In Study 1, survey data from 136 countries were examined and showed that prosocial spending is associated with greater happiness around the world, in poor and rich countries alike. To test for causality, in Studies 2a and 2b, we used exper…
Street network connectivity leads to denser urban form in Canadian cities
The Short-Run Household, Industrial, and Labour Impacts of the Quebec Carbon Market
Resistance to the implementation of greenhouse gas pricing policies comes in part from fears about the concentrated impacts on certain industries, certain regions, and on less affluent households. These distributional concerns are valid and, to be fair, policy can accommodate some transitional measures to soften the impact of sudden policy changes. However, the carbon pricing policy recently instituted in Quebec, in partnership with California un…
The Quebec Convergence and Canadian Life Satisfaction, 1985–2008
Self-reported life satisfaction is increasingly measured in government and private surveys around the world. In Canada, life satisfaction questions have not been asked in a consistent manner over time, but the accumulated set of data since 1985, along with recent surveys with repeated structure, now facilitates an analysis of regional changes. Those two and a half decades reveal a significant increase in life satisfaction in the province of Quebe…
The impact of daily weather conditions on life satisfaction
Viewpoint
Increasing attention is being paid in academic, policy, and public arenas to subjective measures of well‐being. This promising trend represents a shift towards measuring positive outcomes in psychology and greater realism in the study of economic behaviour. We describe the main measures of subjective well‐being (SWB) and provide examples of policy‐relevant research findings, including new accountings of the differences in individual‐level SWB ass…
The Quebec Convergence and Canadian Life Satisfaction, 1985–2008
Self-reported life satisfaction is increasingly measured in government and private surveys around the world. In Canada, life satisfaction questions have not been asked in a consistent manner over time, but the accumulated set of data since 1985, along with recent surveys with repeated structure, now facilitates an analysis of regional changes. Those two and a half decades reveal a significant increase in life satisfaction in the province of Quebe…
Prosocial spending and well-being
This research provides the first support for a possible psychological universal: Human beings around the world derive emotional benefits from using their financial resources to help others (prosocial spending). In Study 1, survey data from 136 countries were examined and showed that prosocial spending is associated with greater happiness around the world, in poor and rich countries alike. To test for causality, in Studies 2a and 2b, we used exper…
A century of sprawl in the United States
Significance Urban development patterns in the 20th century have been increasingly typified by urban sprawl, which exacerbates climate change, energy and material consumption, and public health challenges. We construct the first long-run, high-resolution time series of street-network sprawl in the United States. We find that even in the absence of a coordinated policy effort, new developments have already turned the corner toward less sprawl. Ini…
The Short-Run Household, Industrial, and Labour Impacts of the Quebec Carbon Market
Resistance to the implementation of greenhouse gas pricing policies comes in part from fears about the concentrated impacts on certain industries, certain regions, and on less affluent households. These distributional concerns are valid and, to be fair, policy can accommodate some transitional measures to soften the impact of sudden policy changes. However, the carbon pricing policy recently instituted in Quebec, in partnership with California un…
Life Satisfaction among Aboriginal Peoples in the Canadian Prairies
Subjective measures of overall quality of life are built in to numerous surveys in Canada and around the world, and are increasingly analyzed and used as indicators of human well-being and social progress. Yet, even in Canada, federal surveys exclude Aboriginal peoples on-reserve and, in general, there are very few data sources on life satisfaction among Aboriginal respondents. We report on two exceptional surveys that do solicit life satisfactio…
The world’s user-generated road map is more than 80% complete
OpenStreetMap, a crowdsourced geographic database, provides the only global-level, openly licensed source of geospatial road data, and the only national-level source in many countries. However, researchers, policy makers, and citizens who want to make use of OpenStreetMap (OSM) have little information about whether it can be relied upon in a particular geographic setting. In this paper, we use two complementary, independent methods to assess the …
More connected urban roads reduce US GHG emissions
We quantify the importance of early action to tackle urban sprawl. We focus on the long-term nature of infrastructure decisions, specifically local roadways, which can lock in greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come. The location and interconnectedness of local roadways form a near-permanent backbone for the future layout of land parcels, buildings, and transportation options. We provide new estimates of the environmental impact of low-conne…
The impact of daily weather conditions on life satisfaction
Measuring Progress and Well-Being
Levers and leverage points for pathways to sustainability
Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets. Until recently, there was no broadly accepted framework of interventions that could ignite the transformations needed to achieve these desired targets and goals. As a component of the IPBES Global Assessment, we conducted an iterative expert deliberation pro…
Life satisfaction and sustainability
The growing maturity of the “science of happiness” raises the prospect of enabling government policy to be more accountable to the measurable subjective experience of the population. In its ideal form, the application of this science promises to inform decision makers about the likely distribution of life satisfaction resulting from any prospective policy, allowing for the selection of more optimal policy. Such “budgeting for wellbeing” invites t…
A Public, Open, and Independently-Curated Database of Happiness Coefficients
We present a nascent database of happiness coefficients. This is a synthesis of evidence on the size of improvements to human life experience that can be expected from changing objective, policy-amenable circumstances. The wealth of data on people’s self-reported satisfaction with life in a wide variety of circumstances, from around the world, including respondents undergoing a diversity of changes and life events and subject to a variety of publ…
Dividing Highways
We examine the barrier effects of freeways in California. We analyze the association between freeways and nearby street network connectivity and quantify the frequency and quality of crossings—underpasses or bridges that enable pedestrians and cyclists to cross the freeway. We find that barrier effects are most pronounced in communities of color. We also find that even where crossings exist, they are unpleasant or even hazardous for pedestrians a…
A high-resolution global time series of street-network sprawl
Systems of street networks form a backbone for many aspects of human life and, once laid down, urban streets represent a nearly immutable influence on future urban form and concomitant travel, energy, and social outcomes. Moreover, as humanity is currently passing through its peak urbanization rate, decisions about how to design such networks at the local scale are being made faster than ever before. In this work, we quantify local street connect…
Built environment's main and moderating associations with travel mode choice across trip purposes
Street network connectivity leads to denser urban form in Canadian cities
Experienced climate change impacts help explain subjective well‐being—Evidence from 14 nature‐dependent communities
Climate change profoundly affects well‐being in complex and interconnected ways. However, the relationship between climate change and well‐being has been explored in only a handful of settings, most of which are industrialized. Here, we investigate the association between perceived climate change impacts, their severity and subjective well‐being (measured as life satisfaction) using cross‐culturally comparable first‐hand reports from 2488 partici…
Economics (9 works) · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Geography (7 works) · Life satisfaction (7 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (5 works) · Urban Transport and Accessibility (5 works) · Happiness (4 works)