Global Seminar | Telework-to-Play or Play-to-Telework? Investigating the Directional Relationship Between Telework and Nonwork Travel

Abstract

This study examines the bidirectional relationship between teleworking and weekly participation in nonwork activities (maintenance and leisure). We use a latent segmentation model to distinguish between individuals for whom nonwork activity participation influences telework frequency (“players”) and those for whom telework frequency affects nonwork activity participation (“workers”), jointly modeling telework and stop-making to account for correlated unobserved factors. Using 2021–2022 weekly travel survey data from workers in the Twin Cities region, we find substantial heterogeneity in causal direction: for about two-thirds of individuals, nonwork activity participation shapes telework intensity, while for the remainder the reverse holds. Contrary to prior studies that implicitly assume the latter for all individuals, our results show this applies only to a minority. We further find an inverted U-shaped relationship between nonwork stop-making and telework intensity, with the highest number of stops occurring at low telework levels (about one day per week). Consistent with recent evidence, this implies that low levels of teleworking may increase both commute and nonwork VMT, suggesting that moderate to high telework intensity is necessary to achieve VMT reductions.

About the Speaker

Dr. Chandra R. Bhat is the Joe J. King Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and Director of the USDOT-funded National Center for Understanding Future Travel Behavior and Demand. He is an internationally recognized leader in travel demand modeling and travel behavior analysis, with seminal contributions to activity-based modeling, discrete choice methods, and land use–transport interactions. His work has received over 47,000 citations (h-index 113, Google Scholar), and he previously served as Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Research Part B: Methodological.