Identifying teleworking-related motives and comparing telework frequency expectations in the post-pandemic world: A latent class choice modeling approach

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, teleworking is still widely adopted even though it is no longer a mandatory work arrangement. It is important to understand the motives of those who continue to telework, as diverse motives may be associated with heterogeneous travel patterns. In this study, we apply a latent class choice model to a 2021 sample of current and expected future teleworkers, and identify five latent segments based on their dominant telework-related motives, namely travel-dominant (comprising 25% of the weighted sample), flexibility-dominant (24%), career-dominant (22%), workplace-discouraged (20%), and family-dominant (9%). Specifically, travel-dominant, workplace-discouraged, and family-dominant teleworkers may use teleworking to solve particular issues, while flexibility-dominant teleworkers may simply be drawn to some of the assorted merits of teleworking (perhaps even to its “option value”). Career-dominant teleworkers tend to treat teleworking as an occasional work arrangement. We also generate detailed segment-specific profiles to better understand each type of teleworker. The segment-specific outcome models explore factors that influence the expected post-COVID teleworking frequency. We find that factors such as gender, education, and job characteristics have heterogeneous impacts on teleworkers with different dominant motives. Interestingly, results suggest gendered family-support roles even among teleworkers with apparently similarly family-oriented motivations. Overall, this study provides useful insights based on classifying teleworkers by different telework-related motives and exploring the heterogeneous impacts of other variables on teleworking frequency. The results will lay a foundation for future studies to explore teleworking impacts on post-COVID travel behavior changes.