How to Sustain Work from Home? Employers’ and Employees’ Perspectives

The study seeks to contribute to programs in Transportation Demand Management (TDM) and Commute Trip Reduction (CTR), with the specific aim to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and to increase related co-benefits in the forms of reduced traffic congestion and environmental pollution. The study explores lessons learned from the Covid-19 pandemic when a large proportion of the population was forced to work from home as the result of lockdown policies implemented at the beginning of the outbreak. The pandemic-induced natural experiment on teleworking afforded rich information on who future commuters might be who could be targeted to continue to telework successfully after the pandemic subsides.
Data come from a 4,506-respondent survey administered in the Spring of 2020. Of those, 2,174 lived in Puget Sound and had been forced to switched from working away from home to working from home. Respondents who reported being equally or more productive as they worked from home were older professionals, living with a partner but not with children, and not working in the education sector. From the TDM and CTR perspectives, it was promising to find out that respondents who drove to work before Covid were more likely to report being equally or more productive when working from home. In contrast, respondents who walked to work were less likely to be more productive when working from home. The study provides useful information on the types of commuters who could be encouraged to continue working from home once the pandemic is under control.