Early adopters of new transportation technologies: Attitudes of Russia's population towards car sharing, the electric car and autonomous driving

This paper studies the willingness among Russia's population to try out three new transport technologies: electric cars, car-sharing, and autonomous driving. The assumption is that these three offerings will in the near future appear as autonomously driving vehicles booked on a subscription basis. Next to socio-economic parameters such as age, gender, place of living or holding a driver's licence, we introduce three measures: values of self-expression, attitudes to-wards science and technology and attitudes towards novelties in general to explain the likelihood to try out these transport innovations. Thereby, this paper increases the understanding of the preconditions that lead to wide-spread acceptance of transport innovations. An analysis of the psychological set-up of the respondents allowed for the identification of a group of enthusiasts that are excited to try out these new transportation offerings. We argue that application of such an approach deepens the understanding of social mechanisms behind technology adoption and can be useful for the identification of social groups that support related processes.

Automated summary

This paper studies the willingness among Russia's population to try out three new transport technologies and argues that analyzing the psychological set-up of the respondents helps identify a group of enthusiasts for these new transportation offerings.