The Impact of Peer Influence on Parent Willingness to Transport Children in Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

When considering autonomous vehicles (AV) as a potential to increase the mobility of children, one must consider parent opinion, as parents make transportation decisions for their families. This decision making may be impacted by several factors including peer influence on technology adoption from other parents. The current paper examines the potential for the social influence of other parents to impact parent willingness to adopt AVs for their own teenagers. Early adopter status was found to be significantly related to willingness, while effects of sex and age were non-significant. These findings add to the literature that the perceived notion of being an early adopter of technology contributes to parent willingness to use AV for their adolescent children. Future research should examine social and technology readiness factors in the willingness and adoption of AV in children’s mobility from a family perspective.

Group trust dynamics during a risky driving experience in a Tesla Model X

“…In this case, trust referents came from family members, pop culture reporters, experience from their own vehicles and technologies in general, and social media. A similar mechanism of peer influence was observed with parents' willingness to let their children ride unattended in an AV (Ayala et al, 2022 ). Users are also anthropomorphized by conversing and relating their experience with other vehicles to their experience with the Tesla.…”

“…AV (Ayala et al, 2022). Users are also anthropomorphized by conversing and relating their experience with other vehicles to their experience with the Tesla.…”

What Makes Parents Consider Shared Autonomous Vehicles as a School Travel Mode?

“…This factor has been considered as one of the main factors affecting individuals' intention to use AVs. A well-established positive relationship has been reported in prior research [9,[31][32][33][34], indicating that individuals with higher innovativeness are more likely to adopt autonomous mobility for their children's school travel mode. Perceived usefulness refers to how much a person believes that using a particular technology will be beneficial to them [38].…”

“…Parents' gender is also another factor that has been considered in previous studies. In most prior studies, it has been concluded that fathers are more likely to allow their children to use autonomous mobility as a school travel mode [7,31,32,35]; however, no significant relation was found by Ayala et al [33] or Anania [36]. Parents' education level is another demographic factor that positively influenced their intentions to use AVs in most studies [9,31,32,34]; however, Mao et al [7] found no significant relationship between these two factors.…”

“…For instance, in several studies, it has been found that the age of parents is positively associated with their intention to allow their children to travel with SAVs [7,31]. While Lee et al [32] concluded that the parents' age has a negative effect on their intention, no significant effect has been observed in the studies conducted by Ayala et al [33] or Lee and Mirman [34]. In addition to parents' age, the impact of the children's age has also been investigated in previous studies, such as that by Lee and Mirman [34], and a positive association between the children's age and the parents' intentions to allow their children to use SAVs has been observed.…”