A copula based joint multinomial discrete-hazard model of work arrangement choice and telecommuting duration

Two important dimensions of work related choices are work location and working hours. Telecommuting (working from home or any convenient place instead of commuting to the conventional working place) can potentially have a substantial impact on traffic demand distribution on a particular day by means of its replacement and displacement effect. Consequently, it is of interest to analyze the effect and extent of telecommuting adoption across the labor force. This study proposes a copula based joint discrete multinomial-duration model of choice accommodating the two dimensions of work related choices: work arrangement and aggregated duration of telecommuting episodes on a particular day. In the econometric model telecommuting episodes are defined so as the duration is at least 30 minutes and only home-based telecommuting is considered and sample is drawn from the ATUS, 2007 data. The results from the estimated model show that gender, higher-education, responsibility for child-care, family ties act as driving forces for adopting telecommuting. The sign of the Gaussian copula parameter or dependency parameter implies that the unobserved factors act in opposite direction on the two dimensions: work arrangement choice and aggregated telecommuting episode duration.