Trust and user acceptance of pilotless passenger aircraft

Abstract

This study examines the empirical relations between trust and society's willingness to accept an emerging technology in air travel. This paper extracts attitudinal factors related to trust from the Remotely Piloted Passenger Aircraft Attitude Scale. The analyses identified “trust in remotely piloted aircraft” and “trust in on-board pilot and aviation regulators”, among other variables such as age, gender, and perceived risk, to influence aviation consumer's acceptance of a pilotless aircraft. The modelling reveals asymmetrical and diminishing effects of trust, where an incremental improvement in trust from the mean has a limited effect on acceptance, while the equivalent loss of trust from the mean significantly reduces acceptance. Moreover, trust in on-board pilot and regulators increases the probabilities of "very likely" and "very unlikely" acceptance at the expense of neutrality. While polarisation in acceptance is consistent with earlier findings in cognizant context, this study provides empirical insights on the dimensions of trust closely linked to such polarisation.