Working from home: What is the effect on employees' effort?

Arbeitspapier

This paper investigates how working from home affects employees' work effort. Employees, who have the possibility to work from home, have a high autonomy in scheduling their work and therefore are assumed to have a higher intrinsic motivation. Thus, we expect working from home to positively influence work effort of employees. For the empirical analysis we use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). To account for self-selection into working locations we use an instrumental variable (IV) estimation strategy. Our empirical results show that working from home has a significantly positive influence on work effort. Moreover, we find that also the frequency of working from home is crucial. The more often employees work from home, the higher is the work effort they provide.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WWZ Working Paper ; No. 2016/07

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Labor Standards: Working Conditions ; Personnel Economics: General ; Personnel Economics: Labor Management
• Subject: working from home ; job design ; work effort ; intrinsic motivation ; reciprocity

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Rupietta, Kira ; Beckmann, Michael
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Basel, Center of Business and Economics (WWZ)
• (where): Basel
• (when): 2016

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.5451/unibas-ep61317
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/162183
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET