1663484 - Teleworking to Play or Playing Because of Telework?

The evolution of digital technology, combined with COVID-19 pandemic effects, has led to an upheaval of activity-travel habits and behaviors. This is particularly the case in relation to the interplay between telework adoption and activity-travel patterns. Even before the pandemic, many research studies investigated the impact of telework on activity-travel behavior. Most of these studies examined telework intensity associations with either commute travel or with nonwork travel. In this regard, while it is generally established that teleworkers are associated with lower levels of commute-related vehicles miles traveled, studies on nonwork travel associations with telework suggest some rise in nonwork travel (though the magnitude of this rise is less clear and less consistent). This latter association may be attributed to telework releasing the time spent commuting, which can then potentially be appropriated for additional maintenance and leisure activities that may have been more difficult to schedule when commuting. But it could as well be because individuals who already partake (or desire to partake) in a high intensity of outside-of-home maintenance and leisure activities choose to telework more to facilitate their chosen (or desired) high outside-of-home activity intensity lifestyle. This raises the question of the causal direction of effect: is telework the driver (or at least the facilitator) of more nonwork travel, or is telework the result of a desire for more nonwork travel in the first place. This causality issue, to our knowledge, has not even been adequately recognized in the telework-nonwork literature, let alone examined.

Motivated by the discussion above, our study explores the causal direction underlying the interplay of teleworking choice and nonwork travel, within the context of the telework landscape in the aftermath of the pandemic. We model the telework frequency, maintenance stop frequency, and leisure stop frequency decision-making process as a package choice to account for unobserved factors, as well as use a latent segmentation approach to recognize the two possible and distinct causal behavioral directions that may be at play. The methodology combines an ordinal choice model for telework adoption/intensity with weekly count models for the number of maintenance and leisure stops. The data for the analysis is drawn from a 2021-2022 weekly travel diary and survey of Minnesotan workers.

 
The results from this study will provide clear insights regarding telework intensity and its relationship with nonwork travel behavior. We expect that the causal direction of this relationship will vary across individuals, such that there will be a significant fraction of individuals for whom nonwork travel spurs teleworking (teleworking to play) as well as a significant fraction of individuals for whom telework spurs additional outside-of-home nonwork travel (playing because of telework). By exploring the direction(s) of the relationship between telework and nonwork travel, planners and other professionals will be able to anticipate how traffic patterns may change during both peak and non-peak hours due to teleworking arrangements. Insights from our results can, therefore, help transportation planners at city, regional and state levels to make appropriate changes in their travel demand model systems.