Are slow internet connections limiting home working opportunities?

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 resulted in many governments imposing restrictions on people’s mobility and ordering workers to work from home where possible. As the pandemic has progressed, these restrictions have eased but many hope to maintain a higher frequency of working from home than they had before the pandemic. However, home working often requires a good internet connection. Those without good connections may have limited options for home working and may therefore have to travel to the office more often. In this paper, we examine whether people living in areas with faster internet connections are more likely to have increased their frequency of telecommuting compared to those in areas with slower connections. We also examine whether home working reduces overall travel demand, or whether there is a rebound effect. We find that faster connections are associated with an increase in the frequency of home working. As expected, these workers do not travel as much for work purposes. There is no evidence of a rebound effect for these workers.