Public acceptance and adoption of autonomous vehicles over time: A case study for Seattle

Abstract

This study focuses on the factors affecting the public acceptance of fully autonomous vehicles over partial automation, investigating the possible future scenario of “SAVs” (Shared Autonomous Vehicles) and the implications related to this scenario. Following this approach, a comparative analysis is being conducted based on repeated cross-sectional data derived from PSRC, in order to examine differences and changes in acceptance over time. The results of the multinomial logistic regression models deployed suggest that socio-demographics, mobility characteristics, travel attitudes, tech-savviness, current vehicle, and contextual characteristics are associated with public perspectives regarding shared driverless cars and their automation level, revealing that younger male workers, who are more educated and tech-savvy, residents of high-density urban areas and currently having more active/sharing travel attitudes to be more likely to embrace the new technology. As far as the changes over time, we conclude that the list of factors significantly affecting acceptance is not the same over time. A quite significant increase in interest is observed, considering the fact that the intermediate time between the two surveys is only two years. However, the percentage of people that show no willingness to accept such a radical change and their level of concern is still substantially high, confirming the fact that technology often moves faster than acceptance.