Amused, accepted, and used? Attitudes and emotions towards automated vehicles, their relationships, and predictive value for usage intention

Abstract

Automated vehicles (AVs) have left the laboratories and can be experienced in several projects, e.g. at the premises of a clinic in Germany. With this transition, research on AV attitudes no longer needs to rely on questionnaires with hypothetical scenarios and simulations. Previous research-limited by the unavailability of AVs-has provided ambivalent results regarding age and gender differences in attitudes towards AVs. We present research results about the role of age and gender in connection with attitudes such as acceptance, perceived safety, and trust, as well as intention to use. We additionally demonstrate relationships between those constructs and emotions such as amusement, fear, and surprise. Data were collected from participants (n = 125) after having experienced an AV ride with level 4 automation on two campuses of a clinic in Berlin, Germany. Results reveal strong correlations between all attitudes (.55 ≤ r ≤ .71; p < .01) and show acceptance and perceived safety to be solid predictors of intention to use AVs. We also found age to be a significant predictor for usage intention even when other attitudes are considered (β =-0.22; p < .01). MANOVA results point to gender differences in all constructs, but with limited confidence (5.40 ≤ F ≤ 18.34; p ≤ .02). However, we reject our hypothesis that young men are highly accepting, trusting, and intending to use AVs compared to other combinations of age and gender. We recommend using a mix of attitude, emotion, and behavioural (intention) measures in future research on AVs together with more transparency regarding construct definitions and study materials.

Experience and Acceptance of Autonomous Shuttles in the Brussels Capital Region

“…Secondly, we want to discuss the evaluation of the conceptual model. In line with previous shuttle acceptance studies [21,22,27], we used hierarchical multiple regression analysis to test the moderated research model. For Woluwe Park, the first model included the UTAUT-based items and explained 15% of the variance of usage intention.…”

“…Additionally, the lower predictive power of the model for the Woluwe site indicates that a significant contributor is still missing for successfully predicting the intention to use autonomous shuttles for a diverse population. Based on results from previous research, trust in autonomous technology and the perceived safety of autonomous shuttles have been found to be significant factors [27,35].…”

“…Although the acceptance model was not built on general technology acceptance theory, the results showed that passengers indicated high ratings for their intention to use the vehicle in the future, expressed acceptance and trust in the vehicle and perceived it as safe [26]. Using hierarchical multiple regression analysis, the study showed that acceptance, linked to the usefulness or satisfaction with the shuttle, is the strongest predictor of usage intention, followed by perceived safety and age [27].…”

“…Finally, environmental consciousness and usage intention showed a very weak negative correlation. To further investigate the relationships between respondents' usage intention and the independent variables, a hierarchical multiple linear regression was performed [22,27]. In the first step, the linear model included the items based on the UTAUT2 model.…”

“…A great deal can be learned from field research in which passengers and other road users experience an autonomous shuttle. The main research purpose of the pilot projects is often capturing user attitudes and willingness to use future autonomous services [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. The present study aimed to investigate citizens' intention to use autonomous vehicles in the Brussels Capital Region.…”