1666085 - The Role of Household Family Dynamics in Telecommuting: An Empirical Investigation

Over the past few years, telecommuting has rapidly gained in popularity and grown extensively in the United States. Using data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), this paper investigates the socio-demographic (individual- and household-level), work attributes, health,  and built environment/land-use land use factors that affect individuals’ option and frequency of working from home across different types of U.S. households. Random Parameter Ordered Probit (RP-OP) models are estimated, and the results suggest the influence of individual-level attributes such as gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and education on the adoption and frequency of telecommuting, with considerable levels of unobserved heterogeneity in behavior. As children grow in age, workplace flexibility seems to be increasing as well pointing to the potential challenges faced by younger families.  Additional health-level metrics investigated show the unequal distribution of workplace privileges among healthier individuals. Results also indicate how multi-vehicle ownership in households with dependent members is not always a determinant for greater workplace flexibility as more and more Americans are being forced into car ownership due to the sprawled nature of our cities, additional trip-making requirements, and the unreliability of the existing transportation systems. Lastly, there are important neighborhood/land-use effects that provide deeper insight into our understanding of the telecommuting options and frequencies. The study concludes with important implications for telecommuting in a post-COVID world and a discussion on how and if, pre-pandemic telecommuting analyses such as this current study are a substantial indicator of the post-pandemic reality.