Factors influencing home-based telework in Hanoi (Vietnam) during and after the COVID-19 era

Abstract

During the era of COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease of 2019), telework has been adopted extensively in developing countries for the first time. This study analyzes data of 355 teleworkers in Hanoi (Vietnam) during April 2020, the period of social distancing, to examine various factors associated with (1) complete home-based telework (HBT), (2) the perception of HBT, and (3) the attitude toward the combination between HBT and conventional work at workplace post-COVID-19. It finds that the company's closure policy and the frequency of working from a distance before the social distancing period were the primary determinants of exclusively teleworking. Regarding the perception of HBT, while the fear of COVID-19 was a strong positive factor, difficulties in focusing on work and accessing data were negative factors. Regarding the attitude toward the future development of HBT, attitudinal factors, commute distance, gender, children in household, and the perception of HBT in the social distancing period were the main predictors. The presence of more than one child negatively affected the perception of telework but positively affected the attitude toward establishing the hybrid work mechanism. The findings suggested that HBT has the potential to alleviate traffic congestion in developing countries and it can be promoted by emphasizing its environment-related benefits. The sample used in this research was collected in the initial stage of constrained mobility and it was not well representative; therefore, this study serves as a proof of concept for ongoing wider analyses on HBT post-COVID-19 or in the subsequent lockdown periods.

Travel Demand Prediction during COVID-19 Pandemic: Educational and Working Trips at the University of Padova

“…Income was found to have a positive effect on the probability not to carry out the trip [4,45,46], but only for employees. Gender has an impact only for students, with males more willing to travel rather females [10,12,29,46,65]. Moreover, as a consequence of the choice to stay at home, the developed model predicts that employees might reduce their commuting trips using sub urban bus, bikes and walking.…”

“…Consequently, in order to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2, many governments implemented severe countermeasures [7]. These non-pharmaceutical interventions were country-specific [7][8][9], however, they globally aimed at limiting interpersonal interactions to reduce human-to-human transmission of the virus [10][11][12]. These measures included social distancing, quarantine for infected people, local lockdowns allowing only essential travel, closures of universities and schools, restrictions on commercial and recreational activities (e.g., non-essential stores, restaurants, theatres), remote working and online learning [1,8,9,[12][13][14][15].…”

“…Firstly, remote working and online learning may induce the cancellation of many systematic trips [4,8,9,46,50] since individuals have the possibility to carry out the corresponding activities at home [7,29,51]. Although factors influencing both remote working and the prediction of its adoption were investigated by many authors [7,10,13,29,51,52], only a few previous works focused on the impact of online learning and students' behaviours on travel demand, but without any predictive analysis. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students experienced drastic changes in their lives [15].…”

Perception and Preference for Home-Based Telework in the COVID-19 Era: A Gender-Based Analysis in Hanoi, Vietnam

“…The mentioned-above background highlights the lack of literature and understanding about the difference between males and females in perceiving HBT and preferring more HBT and potential gender issues during the social distancing in developing countries. In this regard, this study, employing data from [13], aims to explore factors correlated to the perception and the preference for more HBT for male teleworkers versus female peers to analyze the gender inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic. The specific research questions are as follows:…”

“…The Vietnamese government lifted social distancing in Hanoi on 30 April. A recent study [13] published interesting knowledge on factors affecting HBT using the data of 355 teleworkers collected in Hanoi within the social distancing course.…”