6. CONCLUSION

6.1 Summary

This paper has investigated the perceptions and preferences of telecommuting from both a telecommuting center and from home. First, a review of telecommuting literature was conducted to define relevant terminology and relate the findings of other researchers. While other researchers have investigated the preference for home-based telecommuting, only one other researcher has considered the case of center-based telecommuting. Next, a description of the results from a attitudinal, sociodemographic, and transportation survey was presented. An analysis of variance found the survey group means for job satisfaction and work attitudes questions to be mostly indistinguishable but the means for the work attitude questions were significantly different among work locations.

Following an established procedure for choice and preference modeling, factor analysis was used to reduce the interrelated job satisfaction and work attitudes questions to their underlying dimensions. The four job satisfaction factors are supervisor, satisfaction, interaction, and frustration. The five work attitudes factors for each of the three workplaces (regular workplace, telecommuting center, and home) are personal benefits, work ethic, work responsibility, family, and supervisor concerns. Both the factor variables as well as work and household-related variables were used in binary logit models.

Three logit models were estimated: the preference to telecommute from a center or not, the preference to telecommute from home or not, and the preference to telecommute from a center or from home. In the first model, the preference for center was associated with having personal benefits at the center, a lack of autonomy at the regular workplace, a high amount of overtime, job suitability at the center, older respondents, and the presence of children less than six years of age. In the second model, preference for home was associated with a lack of personal benefits at the center, a strong work ethic at home, job frustration, less experience in the occupation, job suitability at home, the presence of children less than two years of age, and small household size. In the final model, preference for center as opposed to home depended on personal benefits at the center, work ethic at both home and the regular workplace, family care opportunities at home, and older respondents. Importantly, each model contained personal benefits from the center, a measure of the independence drive, as a significant variable.

6.2 Directions for Further Research

There are a number of avenues to pursue in the further study of telecommuting preference using data from the Residential Area-Based Office (RABO) project. Due to the time requirements of the analysis phase of this research, only a certain portion of the data collected was able to be entered into the computer. Data from about another hundred respondents will eventually be added to the current data set. The added information may alter the current factor analysis and logit model results and/or provide more accurate estimates. In addition, a second wave of surveys has been administered to the study groups and will constitute the "after telecommuting" measurement. Data from these surveys can be used to estimate not only the preference for telecommuting but also the choice of telecommuting.

Another facet of the RABO research project is to study the managers of the prospective telecenter users, home-based telecommuters, and non-telecommuters. The attitudinal surveys for the managers were designed with parallel questions to the employee surveys. Additionally, the managers were asked about the perceived advantages and disadvantages of telecommuting to the organization. Thus, the methodology used in this report to model employee telecommuting preference can be replicated for the manager's telecommuting preference for the employee.

Despite the promise of more information, there are still other analysis methods that can be used on the existing data set. Primarily, multinomial logit modeling can be used to estimate the preference to telecommute. Bagley (1995) has modeled telecommuting preference according to center, home, either, and neither categories. For the RABO project data, however, there are few respondents who fall into the neither category (see Table 5-6). This is likely caused by the sensitivity of the project participants to telecommuting in general. However, a multinomial logit model for this data set could be estimated according to preference for center, preference for home, and preference for either center or home.


Previous
Next
Table of Contents

Return to the Abstracts of Non-Refereed Publications page.
Return to the Main page.