Project Summary
With the recent advent of telecommunications and information technologies, telecommuting becomes a rising trend as one of the most important alternative work arrangements. Moreover, due to the current worldwide outbreak of the COVID-19 disease, this choice has turned out to be a more vital one than ever. It is, therefore, crucial to identify the potential groups of workers who are more likely to be the telecommuters and to understand how the telecommuters schedule their daily activities and travel. The goal of this research is to address these issues. In particular, the team will perform the following three tasks: (1) identification of a number of distinct groups of telecommuters with a representative activity-travel pattern and a similar degree of telecommuting adoption (2) finding out similarities and differences in activity-travel behavior between national-level and regional-level (California) telecommuters and between commuters and telecommuters, and (3) investigation of impacts of telecommuting on individual’s time-use and tour behavior as well as the overall transportation system. Two large household travel survey datasets—2012 California Household Travel Survey (CHTS) and 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) will be used to conduct necessary analysis. This research is expected to provide valuable insights to policy makers on various telecommuter groups and their activity-travel patterns, adoption of telecommuting, and its impacts on travel.
