Mismatch in Preferences for Working from Home: Evidence from Discrete Choice Experiments with Workers and Employers

Abstract

The authors study workers’ and employers’ preferences for remote work, distinguishing between hybrid and fully remote arrangements. Using discrete choice experiments with more than 10,000 workers and 1,500 employers in Poland, they find a shared preference for hybrid over fully remote work. However, workers’ estimated benefits from remote work fall significantly short of employers’ estimated costs, with average gaps equivalent to 5.2% of earnings for hybrid work and 24.6% for fully remote work. Only 25–35% of employers—those with positive views on remote work productivity and high-quality talent management—value remote work costs in line with workers’ valuations of benefits, particularly in non-routine cognitive occupations.