Long-Term Effects of COVID-19, and Its Impact on Business, Employees, and CO 2 Emissions, a Study Using Arc-GIS Survey 123 and Arc-GIS Mapping

Vegh Gary (), Sajedi Sarah () and Naybor Deborah
Additional contact information
Vegh Gary: Ecotoxicology Department, ERA Environmental Consulting, Inc., Saint-Laurent, QC H4S 2A1, Canada
Sajedi Sarah: Sustainability Department, Paul Smiths College, Paul Smiths, NY 12970, USA
Naybor Deborah: Sustainability Department, Paul Smiths College, Paul Smiths, NY 12970, USA

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-22

Abstract: Further investigation is needed to study the impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown and subsequent lifestyle changes. The global pandemic caused a high degree of uncertainty, leading to extreme anxiety. These feelings were also compounded by the sudden changes in lifestyle at home, within families, work, studies, and recreation. With the end of the lockdown approaching in most regions of the world, many of these lifestyle changes, including work-from-home, might remain for a good percentage of the workforce. The primary objective of this research is to explore employees’ work-from-home model and its impact on commute time, job satisfaction, and carbon footprint. Quantitative variables include data from North America and Global country-specific carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, and quantitative data, including employee satisfaction, commute time, miles traveled, and more, was collected using ArcGIS Survey123. This research focus on CO 2 emissions data, comparing 2019 data (March to May) as a baseline to 2020, 2021, and 2022 (March to May) as the target year. The hypothesis is that the work-from-home order had a significant impact on short-term CO 2 reductions and could have potential long-term impacts due to many corporations’ adoption of the “work-from-home” model. The data collected regarding CO 2 were analyzed using ArcGIS Pro and Geostatistical Interpolation. This study also explored the potential impacts of this adoption on employee job satisfaction and CO 2 emissions reductions based on surveyed employees. Another objective of this research is to look at the relationship between the COVID-19 lockdown with the work-from-home model and the reduction in air emissions, namely CO 2 .

Keywords: air pollution; CO 2 emissions; lockdown; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13689/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/20/13689/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:20:p:13689-:d:950140

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().