Is telecommuting sustainable? An alternative approach to estimating the impact of home-based telecommuting on household travel

Telecommuting is regarded as a sustainable travel-demand management strategy. In investigating how much telecommuting reduces travel, studies typically adopt one method of the following three: (1) multiplying the telecommuting frequency by the round-trip commute distance, (2) measuring travel changes using quasi-experiments, and (3) determining the marginal effect of telecommuting on travel using econometric analyses. However, each approach has methodological limitations, and previous studies fail to take into consideration various aspects of household travel other than the telecommuter's commute. Against this backdrop, this study presents an alternative approach to estimating the impact of the household head's telecommuting on total household travel other than his or her commute travel using data from the 2006 Household Travel Survey in Korea. Our series of stratified tobit regression analyses show that when the household head does not commute, the usual compensatory travel mechanism induces person-kilometers traveled of 2 km. This rebound effect doubles when the household head telecommutes, although not on regular commuting days. The effect suggests that the benefits of telecommuting are significantly less than anticipated. Consequently, planners and policy makers should consider this counteracting effect when predicting the travel reduction effect of telecommuting or determining the level of telecommuting required to achieve environmental policy goals for urban sustainability.