Does perceived stress mediate the relationship between commuting and health-related quality of life?

•Stress mediates the relationship between commuting time and health-related outcomes.•The results have implications for workplace health promotion and transportation planning.•Structural interventions should target the causes of stress.•Commuters should be empowered to better cope with unavoidable stress. Previous research indicates that employees with long commutes suffer from impaired health. In this paper, we argue that this relation should be conceptualized within a stress–strain framework. Using data from 1928 expatriate employees of the German Foreign Office, we test the mediating role of perceived stress in the relation between daily commuting time and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). We find that long commutes are associated with substantially lower HRQOL and that this relation is well-accounted for by associated increases in stress, particularly among parents. We discuss how a stress perspective can inform future research on commuting impacts and implications for individual, organizational, and policy interventions to mitigate adverse consequences of commuting.