The advent of new telematic tools, the spread of ever-faster connections and the push given by the pandemic have made various forms of remote work, such as smart working and teleworking, increasingly widespread. This paradigm shift has had many impacts on the lives of companies and workers, some positive, some negative, others still little understood.
The project entitled “The emission footprint of telework: when is it sustainable?”, promoted by the Open Lab of the IMT School, aims to study a still little understood aspect of remote working, namely its environmental impact, in particular the emissions of polluting gases.
The research starts with a question that, although seemingly simple, is still unanswered: is remote work really associated with a decrease in pollutant emissions? Intuitively, remote work would seem to have less impact on the environment, since, especially when done from home, it requires less travel, and thus theoretically fewer emissions.
"The benefits highlighted may be related to reduced commuting to work, or to the fact that the employer can adopt organisational solutions to rationalise work spaces and achieve energy savings," explains Valentina Pieroni, researcher in Business Administration at Scuola IMT and principal investigator of the project.
However, the studies in the literature also present conflicting evidence. For example, one phenomenon emerges, that of the so-called rebound effects: "Empirically, it has been found that people who work remotely can adopt behaviours that end up counterbalancing the positive effects," notes Pieroni. "For example, being able to organise their working day flexibly, people adopt different travel habits, moving more frequently or over longer distances, always leaving and returning from home instead of integrating travel within the work commute".
Compared to existing studies, the one underway at theOpen Lab uses an innovative tool, the so-called digital phenotyping: data on people's behaviour is collected via digital devices such as smartphones or other wearable devices. In the study in question, data is collected through an application called Beiwe, developed by Harvard University, which can protect anonymity. The application installed on the smartphone collects information on movements via GPS and accelerometer, so as to make an objective estimate of emissions. This data is supplemented by data on household consumption: 'With a questionnaire, we collect information on household energy consumption habits, to see if there is a detectable effect from this point of view as well'.
The study is currently in its preliminary stages: a sample of people is being selected to start with a month-long data collection. The sample will also include people who do not practice remote working, or people who practice it with a different intensity. The goal is to create a longitudinal dataset by collecting data on the same sample at successive moments, to observe the variation in behaviors over time. “This allows us to study the variation in emissions associated with remote working, both by examining how individuals change their habits when working remotely compared to when they are in the office, and by comparing different subjects. Demographic data, such as gender, age, education and other personal characteristics will also be collected from study participants. "All these characteristics can play a role as possible confounding variables, that is, they can influence both the decision to practice remote working and individual behaviors that can impact the environment. It is therefore good to take these aspects into account in order to isolate the effect of interest."
Jasmine Natalini
