Abstract
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) hold considerable promise for maintaining aging adults’ mobility as they develop impairments in driving skill. Nonetheless, attitudes can be a significant barrier to adoption as has been shown for other technologies. We investigated how different introductions to AV, video with a driver in the front seat, the rear seat, and a written description, affected attitudes, as well as how individual difference variables such as age, gender, prior knowledge, and personality traits predict attitudes within a middle-aged (Median age = 34, IQR = 20, n = 441) Amazon Mechanical Turk sample. The 16-item attitude survey uncovered three factors: Concern with AV, Eagerness to Adopt AV technology, and Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control. ANOVAs showed that only age (younger less concerned) and gender, (females more concerned) were significant factors in Concern with AV. Only gender affected Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control, with males more willing. Multiple regressions that included previous knowledge level and personality traits showed a different pattern. Female gender and greater conscientiousness were associated with greater Concern about AV. Prior knowledge of AV was associated with less concern. Emotional stability and openness to experience were positive predictors of Eagerness to Adopt AV, whereas conscientiousness was a negative predictor. Prior knowledge and openness to experience, positively, and extraversion, negatively, were associated with being willing to relinquish driving control. These results suggest that different information dissemination campaigns are needed to persuade consumers to adopt AV technology. We discuss potential approaches.
Highlights
90% of all day trips in the United States are completed using a personal vehicle1
When we found no interaction effects in the ANOVAs, we conducted exploratory multiple regression analyses to examine the linear effects of gender, age, prior knowledge, personality, and introduction type on attitude factors
Increased openness to experience was positively associated with Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control (β = 0.17, p < 0.01), whereas greater extraversion lessened Willingness to Relinquish Driving Control (β = −0.18, p < 0.01). For this younger to middle-aged sample, the framing that Autonomous vehicles (AVs) received through our introductions did not affect attitudinal factors toward AV significantly, nor did framing interact with age and gender to impact the factors
Summary
90% of all day trips in the United States are completed using a personal vehicle. AV-related benefits to the United States economy have been estimated to approach $196 billion after accounting for increases in vehicle miles traveled, with this gain resulting from reductions of the number of crashes and the amount of time spent in congested traffic, as well as increases in parking savings (Fagnant and Kockelman, 2015). The first was to assess whether an experimental manipulation affecting level of concern for losing vehicle controls would affect attitudes toward AVs in combination with the factors of age (younger versus middle-aged adults) and gender, and whether these factors would interact. We tested these hypotheses with a between-subjects ANOVA on attitude factors (see below). When we found no interaction effects in the ANOVAs, we conducted exploratory multiple regression analyses to examine the linear effects of gender, age, prior knowledge, personality, and introduction type on attitude factors
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