productivity is an easier outcome to study and then used to persuade people to care about the problem. If you tell someone the noise in your factoryis causing a five % decrease in productivity, that means something to them in terms of making the decision of whether to abate noise. And so productivity is nice in that way. It's particularly nice in that you can put a dollar value on it.
The pandemic provided city dwellers with a break from the din of the modern world. Now the noise is coming back. What does that mean for our productivity, health, and basic sanity?