Exploring the endogenous effects among car dependency, work arrangement choice, and daily travel using the 2017 NHTS data

Abstract

The paper presents an effort in investigating the cause-effect relationships among telecommuting, car dependency, and trip making behavior. Data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) was used to develop a structural equations model (with latent constructs) to examine the endogenous effects between the decision to telework, the degree of car dependency, and the number of daily trips. Using confirmatory factor analysis, car dependency was measured by vehicle ownership, annual mileage, and car use frequency. The model provided interesting insights. Car dependency had a negative (both direct and total) impact on telework, an inference that confirms the role of car dependency as a resistant factor against alternative work arrangements and potentially any other new tech-based policies. In the opposite direction and surprisingly, telework encouraged car dependency, which might indicate that teleworkers tended to utilize the relaxed temporal-spatial constraints for non-work trips, and they were unlikely to give up private vehicle ownership simply because of their option to telecommute. Second, number of daily trips tended to increase the probability to telework, confirming the positive endogenous role of daily activity patterns on work arrangement decisions in a daily framework. Lastly, the significant negative impact of telework on daily trips was positively mediated through car dependency, leading to a smaller negative total impact on daily trips. Our study confirms that the association between telework and trip generation is quite a complex and multi-faceted relationship, leaving the argument regarding whether or not telework increases the number of daily trips as a debatable topic that calls for further exploration.