Monday, 26 October 2020

The Wannabe Digital Nomads

One of the more interesting findings of the MBO Partners 2020 Digital Nomad study is the large number of Americans who aren't currently digital nomads who say they want to be.

Key quote from Bloomberg's When You Can’t Work From Barcelona, Boulder Might Do, which covers the study:

"... there is a massive and growing reserve army of digital-nomad wannabes — people who tell the survey-takers they’re planning on going nomadic in the next two or three years, or at least thinking about it."

The chart below, also from the Bloomberg article, shows that 19 million Americans say they plan to become digital while another 45 million say they are considering it.

Digital nomad wannabes

As the article points out, we call these wannabes "armchair digital nomads" because most will not follow through and become digital nomads.  

Instead, they will follow digital nomads on social media and treat the trend almost as a spectator sport.  But the large number of wannabes shows there is a lot of interest in digital nomadism.

In our work we've learned survey questions asking aspiration questions or questions on hot topics often result in a large number of false positives.  And the huge number of people saying they are going to become digital nomads is a good example.

Another example is asking people if they're going to start a business.  We've found only about 9% of those who say in surveys they will be starting a new small business over the next 2-3 actually do so.

We don't yet know how many wannabe digital nomads will follow through and become one - there isn't enough historical data to make an estimate.  But if even a small percentage of the wannabes follow through and become digital nomads,  it will be enough to keep the trend growing.

Emergent Research worked with MBO Partners on this study.



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