The Impact of Telework on Consumption Patterns: Evidence from Mobile Phone and Transaction Data

David Bounie, Chloé Breton, Etienne Côme, John Galbraith, Gabrielle Gambuli.

2024

Abstract

Telework practices have surged following the COVID-19 pandemic, with the proportion of executives working remotely increasing from 11% in 2017 to 55% in 2021 (Hallépée and Mauroux, 2019; Jauneau, 2022). By leveraging mobile phone and card transaction data, we analyze how the shift to remote work influences consumer behavior and spending across different geographic contexts, specifically comparing consumption patterns near home versus at the workplace. We address the limitations of traditional telework measurements, which often depend on annual surveys or temporal comparisons (before and after the COVID-19 pandemic), by utilizing mobile phone data to capture daily variations in residents' presence at home during working hours. This analysis is conducted at the infra-municipality level in the second-largest functional area in France, Lyon. Preliminary analysis suggests that telework is likely associated to huge declines in expected presence in few areas in the core city, while most other areas experience only modest gains. This phenomenon is driven by the high geographic concentration of jobs and the spatial dispersion of residences. We anticipate that a similar trend will be observed in consumption patterns.