With growing concern about the climate impact of travel, a central question is the extent to which working from home (WFH) can reduce commuting. Recently, the question has received even more attention as WFH has increased sharply with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the state of research is marked by mixed results and lacking longitudinal evidence. We investigate the link between WFH and total weekly commuting time by applying fixed effects regression to panel data from the Australian HILDA Survey, covering the period 2002–2019. We go beyond previous research by examining the moderating roles of the extent of WFH, the duration of the WFH episode, and gender. Overall, we find that doing any work from home is associated with a significant decrease in employees’ weekly commuting time of about 14% on average. The reduction sets in immediately with the start of WFH and tends to further increase thereafter. However, only high shares of WFH are associated with substantial drops in commuting time, and reductions are larger for women than men. Taking into account Australian workers’ reported WFH preferences, our results suggest maximum potential future commuting time savings of about 17–25% compared to 2019.

中文翻译：

---

在家工作在多大程度上可以节省通勤时间？使用澳大利亚 HILDA 调查进行的小组分析


随着人们越来越关注旅行对气候的影响，一个核心问题是在家工作 (WFH) 在多大程度上可以减少通勤。最近，随着 COVID-19 大流行的爆发，WFH 急剧增加，这个问题受到了更多关注。然而，研究现状的特点是结果好坏参半，而且缺乏纵向证据。我们通过对澳大利亚 HILDA 调查（涵盖 2002 年至 2019 年）的面板数据应用固定效应回归，研究了 WFH 与每周总通勤时间之间的联系。我们超越了之前的研究，研究了 WFH 的程度、WFH 发作的持续时间和性别的调节作用。总体而言，我们发现在家完成任何工作都会使员工每周的通勤时间平均显着减少约 14%。这种减少随着 WFH 的开始而立即开始，并且此后往往会进一步增加。然而，只有较高的在家办公比例才会导致通勤时间大幅减少，而且女性的减少幅度大于男性。考虑到澳大利亚工人报告的在家办公偏好，我们的结果表明，与 2019 年相比，未来通勤时间最大可能节省约 17-25%。