Post-COVID-19 Commute and Work Patterns
What Is the New Normal? An Analysis of Post-COVID-19 Commute and Work Patterns
Principal Investigator: Patricia L. Mokhtarian, Clifford and William Greene, Jr. Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Co-principal Investigator: Giovanni Circella, Senior Research Engineer, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Project Duration: 12 months
Project Budget (Federal UTC Funds): $56,259
Project Budget (Cost-share): $74,467
Institution: Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract
The study is addressing the following questions: (1a) What are the adoption rates and frequencies of working from home in Spring 2022 (representing at least the “back side” of the COVID-19 pandemic, if not yet completely post-COVID), and what are the intentions to continue to work remotely in the future? (1b) What demographic, geographic, and attitudinal characteristics are associated with adoption/non-adoption, higher or lower frequencies? (2a) What is the distribution of one-way commute lengths, and how has that distribution changed since before COVID-19? (2b) Putting one-way commute lengths together with commute frequencies, what is the distribution of total weekly commute distance traveled, and how has that distribution changed since before the pandemic? (2c) What socio-economic and other characteristics are associated with one-way commute lengths and total weekly commute distances? (3) How have the shares of commute modes changed since before the pandemic, and what characteristics are associated with those changes? To address these questions, we have designed, and are in the process of fielding, an online survey of employed Georgia residents. We are recruiting approximately 2000 respondents through an online opinion panel vendor (Qualtrics). Ultimately, we will also develop models of key behavioral indicators, to enable us to control for multiple behavioral influences simultaneously.