Home
hamburger menu icon

Communications

Information technology has several important impacts on environmental and health outcomes. See also our analysis of energy in information technology.

Usage Statistics

The use of electronics for communication has become pervasive worldwide.

The image: "it_rates.svg" cannot be found!

Sources: Bankmycell 1 and Pew Research Center 2.

Usage time is also high, raising concerns about overuse.

The image: "smartphone_use.svg" cannot be found!

Source: 3.

Communication systems, whether cell phones, broadband Internet, or something else, require infrastructure that tends to be more expensive to provide, per user, in rural areas than in urban areas 4. This leads to a "digital divide", a gap in the quality of communications access in urban and rural areas.

The image: "digital_divide.svg" cannot be found!

Sources: Perrin and Atske 5 and Winslow 6.

The digital divide has a major impact of the ability to work 7 or do schooling 8 remotely, issues that have become particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Limited communications infrastructure, primarily in rural areas, costs the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year 9.

Information Technology and Travel

The relationship between the availability of telecommunications and the overall amount of travel is well-studied. The weight of evidence is that advancing information technology is leading to an increase in overall travel.

FactorEffect on TravelSource
Smartphone UsageOverall trips increasedHong and Thakuriah 10
Overall communications expendituresMixed effects, but generally increases travelChoo et al. 11
Overall communicationsDecrease work travel in rural areas, increase social travel, increase travel overallClark and Unwin 12
Overall telecommunicationsIncrase travel on netSaloman 13, 14
Overall telecommunicationsIncreases travelMokhtarian 15, 16
Overall telecommunicationsIncreases travelMokhtarian 17
Mobile device usageStimuates travel by allowing productive use of travel timeLyons and Urry 18

Telecommuting and Travel

The Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti found that people typically spend an hour per day traveling 19. Marchetti presents this as an "anthropological invariant", meaning that it holds across cultures and time periods since the Neolithic. It may be expected, then any reduction in commuting travel that results from remote work will be made up for with some other kind of travel. This effect is known as the rebound effect, and it is analogous to the rebound effect observed with energy efficiency.

Hook et al. 20 performed a systematic literature review on the energy impact of remote work, and of the 39 studies found that meet the study criteria, 26 found a clear savings of energy as a result of remote work. However, this result should be interpreted carefully, as most of the studies did not consider a full, system-wide analysis of energy consumption.

Several studies have found that telecommuting increases non-work travel but decreases overall travel.

Telecommuting: Effect on TravelSource
Reduces work travelHelminen and Ristimäki 21
Increases non-work travel but reduces overall travelKim 22, 23
Increases non-work travel, decreases travel overallBalepur et al 24
Reduces overall vehicle miles traveledChoo et al. 25
Reduces overall vehicle miles traveledHerderson and Mokhtarian 26

Zheng et al. 27 estimate that a 10% increase in the rate of remote working in the United States would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 190 million tons of carbon dioxide, which they find by performing regressions on vehicle-miles traveled and work from home rates across states and over time during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the study overestimates potential savings by conflating all transportation emissions with emissions from commuting by personal car. Furthermore, the regression implicitly attributes the increase in non-commute trips to the rollback of remote work as the COVID-19 pandemic receded, which would cause it to overestimate the impact of remote work.

In the United States, about 29% of air travel 28 and 23% of driving 29 is for work commuting and business purposes, representing the most promising opportunities for substitution with telecommunications.

Virtual travel is not yet a full substitute for physical travel. For example, in-person academic conferences foster collaborations in a way that online conferences are not yet able to do 30. But it is a partial substitute, with, for instance, Internet connectivity fostering academic collaborations 31.

There are several specific rebounds from remote work.

Longer Commutes

Zhu 32 finds that remote work opportunities cause people to live farther from their workplaces--rather than the two variables being merely correlated. This provides evidence for a fixed travel time budget 33, on which Marchetti's constant 19 is based. Zhu finds that telecommuters had an average of 34% longer work commutes than non-telecommuters in 2001, and by 2009 this ratio had increased to 43%, suggesting that the option for remote work was influencing a decision to move farther from the workplace or to take a job farther from home.

Helminen and Ristimäki 34 find that telework reduces total distanced travelled by 0.7% in Finland, and that remote workers have a 3.7 kilometer longer commute than non-remote workers, suggesting that longer commute distances offset most of the gains from avoiding some commutes with remote work. De Abreu e Silva and Melo 35 find a similar result in the United Kingdom, and in particular that remote work increases overall travel for one-worker households and has a neutral effect on two-worker households. Henderson et al. 36 find that remote workers tend to travel farther distances on days they are not working from home than non-remote workers, as well as lesser distances on days they are working from home, and overall travel distances is roughly the same. De Vos et al. 37 find that teleworkers have a 12% longer commute than non-teleworkers in The Netherlands.

References

  1. Bankmycell. "How Many Smartphones are in the World?". Accessed May 13, 2021. ↩

  2. Pew Research Center. "Mobile Fact Sheet". April 2021. ↩

  3. Spajik, D. J. "How Much Time Does the Average Person Spend on Their Phone?". Kommando Tech. February 2020. ↩

  4. Reddick, C. G., Enriquez, R., Harris, R. J., Sharma, B. "Determinants of broadband access and affordability: An analysis of a community survey on the digital divide". Cities 106: 102904. November 2020. ↩

  5. Perrin, A., Atske, S. "7% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?". Pew Research Center. April 2021. ↩

  6. Winslow, J. "America’s Digital Divide". Pew Trust Magazine. July 2019. ↩

  7. Andreason, S., Haley, P., Miller, S., de Zeeuw, M. "The Digital Divide and the Pandemic: Working from Home and Broadband and Internet Access". Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. June 2020. ↩

  8. Vogels, E. "59% of U.S. parents with lower incomes say their child may face digital obstacles in schoolwork". Pew Research Center. September 2020. ↩

  9. Deloitte. "Deloitte: Quantifying the Economic Impact of Closing the Digital Divide". PR Newswire. May 2021. ↩

  10. Hong, J., Thakuriah, P. V. "Examining the relationship between different urbanization settings, smartphone use to access the Internet and trip frequencies". Journal of Transport Geography 69, pp. 11-18. 2018. ↩

  11. Choo, S., Lee, T., Mokhtarian, P. L. "Do Transportation and Communications Tend to Be Substitutes, Complements, or Neither? U.S. Consumer Expenditures Perspective, 1984-2002". Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1, pp. 121-132. 2007. ↩

  12. Clark, D., Unwin, K. I. "Telecommunications and travel: Potential impact in rural areas". Regional Studies 15(1). February 1981. ↩

  13. Salomon, I. "Telecommunications and travel relationships: a review". Transportation Research Part A: General 20(3), pp. 223-238. May 1986. ↩

  14. Salomon, I. "Telecommunications and Travel: Substitution or Modified Mobility?". Journal of Transport Economics and Policy 19(3), pp. 219-235. September 1985. ↩

  15. Choo, S., Mokhtarian, P. "Telecommunications and travel demand and supply: Aggregate structural equation models for the US". Transportation Research Part A-Policy and Practice, 41(1), pp. 4-18. January 2007. ↩

  16. Mokhtarian, P. "Telecommunications and Travel: The Case for Complementarity". Journal of Industrial Ecology 6(2), pp. 2008. February 2008. ↩

  17. Mokhtarian, P. "If telecommunication is such a good substitute for travel, why does congestion continue to get worse?". The International Journal of Transportation Research 1(1), pp. 1-17. 2009. ↩

  18. Lyons, G., Urry, J. "Travel time use in the information age". Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 39(2-3), pp. 257-276. February-March 2005. ↩

  19. Marchetti, C. "Anthropological invariants in travel behavior". Technological Forecasting and Social Change 47(1), pp. 75-88. September 1994. ↩ ↩2

  20. Hook, A., Court, V., Sovacool, B. K., Sorrell, S. "A Systematic Review of the Energy and Climate Impacts of Teleworking". Environmental Research Letters 15(9): 093003. 2020. ↩

  21. Helminen, V., Ristimäki, M. "Relationships between commuting distance, frequency and telework in Finland". Journal of Transport Geography 15(5), pp. 331-342. September 2007. ↩

  22. Kim, S. "Is telecommuting sustainable? An alternative approach to estimating the impact of home-based telecommuting on household travel". International Journal of Sustainable Transportation 11(2), pp. 72-85. June 2016. ↩

  23. Kim, S. "Two traditional questions on the relationships between telecommuting, job and residential location, and household travel: revisited using a path analysis". The Annals of Regional Science 56(2), pp. 537-563. March 2016. ↩

  24. Balepur, P. N., Varma, K. V., Mokhtarian, P. L. "Transportation impacts of center-based telecommuting: Interim findings from the Neighborhood Telecenters Project". Transportation 25, pp. 287-306. August 1998. ↩

  25. Choo, S., Mokhtarian, P. L., Salomon, I. "Does telecommuting reduce vehicle-miles traveled? An aggregate time series analysis for the U.S.". Transportation 32, pp. 37-64. 2005. ↩

  26. Henderson, D. K., Mokhtarian, P. L. "Impacts of center-based telecommuting on travel and emissions: Analysis of the Puget Sound Demonstration Project". Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 1(1), pp. 29-45. September 1996. ↩

  27. Zheng, Y., Wang, S., Liu, L., Aloisi, J., Zhao, J. "Impacts of remote work on vehicle miles traveled and transit ridership in the USA". Nature Cities 1, pp. 346-358. April 2024. ↩

  28. Statista. "U.S. air passengers' main trip purposes in 2017, by type". Accessed March 5, 2020. ↩

  29. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. "Average Annual PMT, VMT Person Trips and Trip Length by Trip Purpose". United States Department of Transportation, National Household Travel Survey data. May 2018. ↩

  30. Clancy, M. "Academic Conferences and Collaboration". New Things Under the Sun. July 2021. ↩

  31. Forman, C., van Zeebroeck, N. "Digital technology adoption and knowledge flows within firms: Can the Internet overcome geographic and technological distance?". Research Policy 48(8): 103697. October 2019. ↩

  32. Zhu, P. "Are telecommuting and personal travel complements or substitutes?". The Annals of Regional Science 48, pp. 619-639. June 2011. ↩

  33. Zahavi, J., Ryan, J. M. "Stability of Travel Components Over Time". Transportation Research Record 750, pp. 19-26. 1980. ↩

  34. Helminen, V, Ristimäki, M. "Relationships between commuting distance, frequency and telework in Finland". Journal of Transport Geography 15(5), pp. 331-341. September 2007. ↩

  35. De Abreu e Silva, J., Melo, P.C. "The effects of home-based telework on household total travel: A path analysis approach of British households". Transportation Research Procedia 27, pp.832-840. 2017. ↩

  36. Henderson, D.K., Koenig, B.E., Mokhtarian, P.L. "Using travel diary data to estimate the emissions impacts of transportation strategies: The Puget Sound Telecommuting Demonstration Project". Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association 46(1), pp. 47-57. January 1996. ↩

  37. de Vos, D., van Ham, M., Meijers, E. J. "IZA DP No. 12578: Working from Home and Commuting: Heterogeneity over Time, Space, and Occupations". IZA Institute of Labor Economics. August 2019. ↩