Laísa Braga Kappler (p), João de Abreu e Silva, Patrícia C. Melo

Federica Rossi

Flexible work arrangements, including telework, emerged in the 1970s after the advent of Information and Communication Technologies. Firstly, these were considered effective travel demand management tools since working from home could eliminate commuting trips and changing travel patterns. Over the years, researchers focused on studying the implications of telework adoption on travel, but the results remain contradictory. Early research concluded that telework reduces travel, including during peak hours, contributing to decreased congestion levels. Over the years, the results became more diverse when new empirical studies indicated neutral or negative effects on travel. The conclusions so far are ambiguous. Conversely, telework could reduce the number of trips but increase travel distances and non-business trips. More recently, researchers focused more on the impacts on mode choice to understand if telework could contribute to more sustainable mobility patterns. In general, teleworkers tend to use more car and less public transportation. In addition, the pandemic promoted a global telework experience, and the social distancing measures adopted during this period changed the perceptions about this discussion. The studies about telework effects on travel patterns increased and showed different conclusions: Teleworkers use more cars and active modes, reduce commuting trips, but travel more for other purposes. The vast telework adoption and concerns about the coronavirus could influence some results. This diversity of results could be described by many factors, such as differences in data collection, sample sizes, sampling methods, modeling methods, socioeconomic variables included in the empirical models, and the incorporation of attitudinal variables and preferences. The telework effects on travel behavior in post-pandemic are unclear. To understand the role of the different variables in the conclusions reached, we develop a meta-analysis of previous empirical studies on the effects of telework on travel. It is based on a systematic literature review of around 130 papers published between 1977 and 2023. The meta-analysis will consider the capacity of telework to reduce travel, thus employing a binary variable (decreases versus increases, is neutral or ambiguous). Due to the diversity of the studies regarding sample, methodology, data collection, and other characteristics, we will test the heterogeneity of this variability by applying Cochran's Q test and applying the more adequate method, either meta-regression or random effects. The results will be discussed based on the capacity of different characteristics influencing the conclusions of the different reviewed empirical studies. Recommendations for future data collection and empirical analysis about telework will be provided

Anthony Macedo, João de Abreu e Silva (p), Patricia Melo

Laísa Braga Kappler

This paper intends to estimate the impact of working from home on commuting time in Portugal. Given the recent increase in the number of individuals working from home (i.e. about 17.5% of the total workforce, according to the latest information for the third quarter of 2023), this analysis holds significant value from transportation and regional policymaking perspectives. The impact is estimated using worker microdata from the Inquérito ao Emprego (i.e. Employment Survey) for the period between the second quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023, while controlling for both individuals’ socio-demographic and job characteristics.
The preliminary results suggest a non-linear relationship between commuting time and the number of days working from home. Commuting time progressively increases with the number of days working from home until reaching four days, where the maximum difference in commuting time is observed compared to individuals not working from home. Subsequently, for individuals working from home five days a week, the difference in commuting time continues to be positive but considerably lower, while the difference is not statistically significant for individuals working from home six or seven days a week.
These results bear important and potentially negative consequences for the sustainability of the urban mobility system, particularly in urban regions where house prices in urban centres have risen sharply, further encouraging people to relocate to areas further away from their workplaces. In future iterations of this work, different estimators will be employed, including estimators such as propensity score matching, to address potential endogeneity between commuting time and working from home.

Marco Biagetti, Giuseppe Croce, Ilaria Mariotti, Federica Rossi, Sergio Scicchitano

João De Abreu E Silva

Following the Covid-19 pandemic's emergence in 2020, we have witnessed an acceleration in the rescheduling of working methods. Specifically, there has been an increase in the number of opportunities for flexible work arrangements at different workplaces, including home or third places (e.g., bars, hotels, coworking spaces, etc.). This phenomenon has raised interest in the quality of work in non-traditional employment, which can be defined as the degree to which a job exhibits qualities that benefit the workers, including their physical and emotional well-being (both actual and perceived).
The paper aims to analyse the differences in terms of quality of work among working from home, traditional workplaces (i.e., employer or business premises) and third places.
The European Working Conditions Telephone Survey's sixth wave (2021) data were analysed through multinomial logistic regression, which compare the relative quality of work encountered by homeworkers with that found by those working at employer or business premises. The dataset includes detailed information on working conditions about 70,000 workers across European countries (i.e., EU Member States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia), including evidence on their workplace, job prospects, working time quality, autonomy over job tasks, work intensity and demographic characteristics.
The results will add to the expanding body of literature on remote working and provide insights into the current policy discussion on the nature of work in the future. Moreover, the paper contributes to the current debates on the quality of work at different workplaces, by providing evidence-based insights for the European countries.