According to a study, working from home and digitization do not necessarily reduce the volume of traffic. According to an analysis by the Leibnitz Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), mobility in districts and urban districts with higher levels of company digitization fell more sharply than in others in the first two years of the coronavirus. After the end of the home office obligation and other corona measures in March 2022, however, this can no longer be proven. It is therefore uncertain whether the home office boost can reduce CO2 emissions in the transport sector in the long term.
“Even if many employees may change their mobility behavior when working from home, these behavioral changes do not necessarily reduce the total distances traveled,” explained ZEW researcher and co-author Janna Axenbeck. Many employees also left the house in the home office, for example for errands and appointments. “It is therefore more important to promote environmentally friendly, climate-neutral mobility than to hope that more home offices will avoid professional journeys,” said Axenbeck.
For the study, a text analysis method was used to evaluate the degree of digitization of companies based on their websites, which contain, for example, references to digital products or online shops. On this basis, the research team estimated the average degree of digitization of the companies located in 400 districts. The data was compared to changes in mobility using cell phone data. “According to our results, digitization has the potential to reduce traffic volume, and this potential was actually used during the peak phase of the pandemic,” explained co-author Daniel Erdsiek. After the lifting of almost all corona measures, however, no connection was found. Data from January 2020 to December 2022 were evaluated.
