Reservation Wages and Reservation Prices for Commuting Time, Flexibility, and Job Security

This study examines jobseekers’ preferences for job attributes and explores heterogeneity across sociodemographic groups, based on a choice experiment where approximately 1850 clients of the Flemish Public Employment Service (PES) who became unemployed 5 to 6 months before, and around 2000 working-age respondents of the Respondi Internet panel in Flanders made a series of choices between hypothetical jobs that di ered in wages, commuting time, schedule exibility, job security, and social impact. The survey’s dynamic design ensures that the attributes are relevant to the respondents. This study nds that respondents value working time exibility (e.g., working from home and schedule exibility), job security, as well as social impact, and need signi cant compensation for longer commuting time. Notably, the willingness to pay for these job attributes di ers signi cantly across sociodemographic groups. These ndings enhance our understanding of labour supply decisions and can inform salary package design. Comparisons between the Respondi sample and the Flemish PES sample show similar patterns. However, the willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-accept measures were muted in the Respondi sample, highlighting that policymakers seeking to collect preference data should be aware of the sensitivity of results to data sampling