The politics of new driving technologies: Political ideology and autonomous vehicle adoption

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) typify the nexus of smart Internet-based technology and prior innovations in transportation. A challenge with AV research is that the technology is not yet readily available for consumers to experience. Thus, public perceptions of AVs are often assessed through survey research which has uncovered demographic and socio-economic differences in the willingness to adopt and pay for AVs. It has also provided information about the perceived benefits and risks associated with AVs and how these perceived benefits and risks affects support for self-driving car technology. More recently, studies have found that political ideology is linked to perceived concerns about self-driving cars but have not yet assessed whether this link extends to the intent to adopt AVs. Given this gap in our knowledge, the contributions of the present paper our twofold. One, we will assess whether political ideology impacts the intention to adopt AVs. Two, we will assess whether political ideology directly or indirectly affects the intention to adopt AVs. As regards the latter, we will conduct a mediation analysis with a path model to assess the extent that political ideology indirectly affects the intention to adopt via the perceived benefits and concerns survey respondents expressed about AVs. Our results reveal political ideology is an important predictor of individuals’ intent to adopt AVs, as characterized by both willingness to ride in and to own AVs. Specifically, compared to conservative participants, moderates and liberals reported higher AV adoption intentions. We also find that the effect of political ideology on AV adoption intention is mediated by participants’ perceived benefits and concerns about AVs. Compared to conservatives, political moderates reported AV adoption intention via higher perceived benefits about AVs. Compared to conservatives, liberals reported higher AV adoption intention through both higher perceived benefits and lower perceived concerns about AVs.