Automated vehicle acceptance in China: Social influence and initial trust are key determinants

Although automated vehicles (AVs) could offer a potentially effective solution to improving road safety, the benefit associated with AVs can be realized only when the public intend to use them. While some efforts have been made to understand why people would use AVs, few of them have investigated the role of social and personal factors in AV acceptance. The present study aimed to fill in this research gap. An AV acceptance model was proposed by extending the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with social and personal factors, i.e., initial trust, social influence, and the Big Five personality and sensation seeking traits. The validity of the proposed model was confirmed with a questionnaire survey administrated to 647 drivers in China. Results revealed that at the very beginning of AV commercialization, perception factors (i.e., perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness) from the original TAM showed significant influence on users' intention to use AVs. But more importantly, it was social influence and initial trust that contributed most to explain whether users would accept AVs or not. Some personality traits also played certain roles in AV usage intention. In particular, sensation seekers and those with a higher openness to experience were more likely to trust AVs and had a higher intention to adopt them. In contrast, neurotic people showed a lower level of trust and were less likely to accept AVs. Practically, these findings suggest that promotion of AVs to influential individuals that could help form good social opinions would have significant downstream effects on AV acceptance at the early state of its marketization.