Investigating the Influence of Self-Driving Cars Accidents on the The Public Attitude: Evidence from Different Countries in Different Continents

Abstract

It is commonly known that the successful dissemination of any new technology requires a broad social acceptance. Self-Driving Cars (SDCs) technology is one of the emerging technologies that is expected to provide numerous advantages. However, the public attitude is the critical factor that determine the extent to which these benefits can be realized. Previous studies show that while the public becomes more familiar with SDCs technology over time, people become more negative towards SDCs. The main scope of these studies is to investigate the influence of the demographic properties on the public perception of SDCs; however, the demographics do not significantly change over time and cannot translate the native shift in the public attitude over time. Consequently, this study focuses solely on investigating the influence of SDCs incidents on the public attitude and perception of this emerging technology using a questionnaire survey that was conducted in five different countries (US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, and Egypt) and 3123 responses were received from respondents with different demographic properties (gender and prior knowledge). The results show that the public attitude moves in the negative direction after the introduction of the accidents, especially for respondents from Europe who showed the highest level of shift (27% and 25% decrease in the interest and trust, and 31% increase in the concern). In addition, respondents from developing countries (Egypt) were the most interested in SDCs than respondents from developed countries.