Examining the treatment effect of teleworking on vehicle-miles driven: Applying an ordered probit selection model and incorporating the role of travel stress

Xinyi Wang and Patricia Mokhtarian

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2024, vol. 186, issue C

Abstract: Teleworking gained considerable popularity during the pandemic, and understanding its impact on travel behavior is of critical interest for post-pandemic transportation planning given its high relevance to travel demand and related issues. We utilize ordered probit endogenous switching regression models to analyze 2021 data from two metropolitan regions, Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX and Washington, DC, consisting of a total of 1,584 observations. We identify factors that impact the adoption and frequency of teleworking (TWing), as well as the weekly vehicle-miles driven (VMD), while accounting for self-selection biases. We define three TW categories: non-TWing (NTW), non-usual TWing (NUTW, fewer than 3 days a week), and usual TWing (UTW, 3+ days a week). We further separate workers based on teleworking-related motives (specifically, travel-stressed or not) to compare results when the outcome variable (VMD) is likely congruent with the teleworking motivation versus when it is not. Based on the model results, we quantify and compare the impacts (i.e. the “treatment effects”) of teleworking on VMD. We find that the treatment effects on the treated – i.e. the effects on NUTWers of adopting NUTWing, and the effects on UTWers of adopting UTWing – constitute significant reductions in VMD, on average, for both travel-stressed and non-travel-stressed TWers. For travel-stressed NTWers, we find that adopting NUTW teleworking at a low frequency level (i.e., less than 3 times a week) would not significantly reduce VMD, while for non-travel-stressed UTWers, adopting NUTW would significantly increase VMD, on average. However, adopting UTWing or increasing teleworking frequency from non-usual to usual always leads to a reduction in VMD on average, whether travel-stressed or non-travel-stressed. The ordered probit endogenous switching regression methodology used here, including visualizations of factual and counterfactual effects and back-transformation of the log-transformed outcome variable, can also be applied to numerous other research topics.

Keywords: Telework; Vehicle-miles driven (VMD); Treatment effect; Motives; Travel stress; Endogenous switching regression; Ordered probit selection model; Log-transform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2024.104072

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