Teleworking and Online Shopping: Socio-Economic Factors Affecting Their Impact on Transport Demand

Abstract

Teleworking and online shopping became commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic and can be expected to maintain a strong presence in the foreseeable future. They can lead to significant changes in mobility patterns and transport demand. It is still unclear, however, how extensive their adoption can be, since each individual has different preferences or constraints. The overall impact on transport depends on which segments of the population will modify their behaviour and on what the substitutes to the current patterns will be. The purpose of this work is to identify the user profiles and spatial aspects that affect the adoption of teleworking and online shopping, and to explore the potential impact on transport demand. To that end, data from an EU-wide survey on mobility were analysed using a Machine Learning methodology. The results suggest that while the take up of the new work and consumption patterns is high on average, there are significant differences among countries and across different socio-economic profiles. Teleworking appears to have a high potential mainly in certain services sectors, affecting commuting patterns predominantly in large urban areas. Online shopping activity is more uniform across the population, although differences among countries and age groups may still be relevant. The findings of this work can be useful for the analysis of policies to encourage the uptake of new technologies in transport and mobility. They can be also a good reference point for future studies on the ex-post analysis of the impacts of the pandemic on mobility.

Factors Affecting the Growth of E-Shopping over the COVID-19 Era in Hanoi, Vietnam

“…To combat the "public health emergency of international concern" declared by the World Health Organization, a series of interventions and recommendations at different degrees (e.g., wearing masks, working from home, social distancing, and lockdown) to limit physical interactions between citizens have been issued [24][25][26]. In adapting to the context of mobility restrictions, people have been accelerating the use of ICT to perform daily activities, such as shopping [27,28]. ACI Worldwide reports that the purchase volume of e-commerce for June 2020 increased by 31%, compared to the same month in 2019 [29].…”

Regional mobility during the Covid-19 pandemic: Analysis of trends and repercussions using mobile phones data across the EU

“…This can be probably explained by the difference in the type of economic activities in the three types of urbanization. A larger number of jobs in urban areas would be suitable for a shift to teleworking rather than in less urbanized zones ( Soler et al, 2021 ). Retail and entertainment activities -which generate more transport activity in urban regions compared to non-urban areas- were also limited during the first phase in most Member States.…”

Desire to work from home: Results of an Irish study

“…However, an Irish study by McCarthy et al (2021) found that men favour daily telework while women would prefer to work remotely less frequent, only several days a week. Also, López Soler et al (2021) , in an EU-wide study using 2018 (i.e. pre-Covid) data, found that male gender was an significant factor in explaining the preference for WfH.…”

“…For instance, Australian employees with high and middle incomes expressed a desire to WfH on a significantly higher number of days ( Beck and Hensher, 2021 ). Similarly, a high-to-middle economic status of teleworkers was a predictor of WfH across pre-pandemic Europe ( López Soler et al, 2021 ). Income was also found to positively affect the weekly amount of WfH in Australia and Chile ( Balbontin et al, 2021 ).…”