How teleworking affects online shopping and home delivery: a joint modeling perspective from post-pandemic New York City

• Relationships between teleworking and deliveries are significant. • Telework-delivery relationships vary by telework duration and goods type. • Better understanding of telework locations and work-type tradeoffs is needed. • Receiver risk tolerance for unattended deliveries varies by type of goods. • Individuals living with young children heavily rely on online shopping and all delivery types. Online shopping, home deliveries, and teleworking have accelerated in recent years. These activities are expected to significantly impact freight and passenger travel demand. While many studies have been conducted to examine factors influencing online shopping and teleworking adoption, home delivery rates, and trade-offs between in-person and online work and shopping activities, the impact of teleworking on daily home delivery activities remains underexamined. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), this study investigates the effect of teleworking on an individual’s daily likelihood to participate in four e-commerce-related activities − online shopping and at-home receipt of packages, groceries, and prepared meals. We simultaneously control for out-of-home activity participation, demographics, household characteristics, and security factors. By comparing model results for multiple activities simultaneously, we capture complexities that should be recognized in related travel demand models and in city logistics planning. Our results indicate that teleworking is associated with an increase in the likelihood of receiving home deliveries, but that specific impacts vary depending on the time spent teleworking and the commodity delivered. Our findings also include recommendations for a wide variety of future research improvements.