We use cookies to provide you with the best possible website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site, as well as cookies used for anonymous statistics, comfort settings, or displaying personalized content. You can decide which categories you want to allow. Please note that depending on your settings, some features of the website may not be available.

Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to enable the core functionality of the website. Opting out of these cookies is not possible.

cb-enable
This cookie stores the user's cookie consent status for the current domain. Expiry: 1 year.
laravel_session
Stores the session ID to recognize the user when the page reloads and to restore their login session. Expiry: 2 hours.
XSRF-TOKEN
Provides CSRF protection for forms. Expiry: 2 hours.
IZA Discussion Paper No. 18154
October 2025
Air Quality and Conferences’ Engagement
Ludovica Gazze, Tanu Gupta, Allen (Weiyi) Huang, Valentina Londono, Santiago Saavedra, Mattie Toma

There is limited evidence on the non-health impacts of air pollution, including productivity in the workplace and behavior. We examine the effect of air pollution on participation, collaboration, and feedback provision in a workplace setting. Our experiment randomly assigns air purifiers to rooms at three large academic conferences to investigate the causal impact of air pollution on participants' engagement behavior. We construct a participant engagement index based on 12 presentation-level behavioral outcomes directly measured by conference observers through an online form and weigh each behavioral outcome using weights elicited from an expert survey. Conference rooms treated with air purifiers exhibit 48% less PM2.5 concentration compared to control rooms. However, we do not find a statistically significant change in engagement. Communication in the workplace might not be a large driver of the empirical relationship between air quality and productivity, albeit more research is needed across workplaces and measures of communication.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

About IZA@LISER Network
Contact
IZA Network (Current Site Operator):

Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences
Maison des Sciences Humaines
L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval, Luxembourg

IZA Institute (In Liquidation):

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH i. L.
Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 5-9, 53113 Bonn. Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894-0 | Fax: +49 228 3894-510
E-Mail: info@iza.org | Web: www.iza.org
Represented by: Martin T. Clemens (Liquidator)