Understanding the Factors Influencing Consumers’ Behaviour Towards Autonomous Vehicles Adoption

In this study, the key determinants or factors influencing consumers’ behavioural intention to accept autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been explored and tested. Although, there is a plethora of studies in the literature evaluating various technologies, most of the models of technology acceptance and theories selected are applied on barriers of successful IT implementation in organisations or generally on technologies that have long been deployed. There are very few studies conducted on disruptive technologies such as AV. In this paper, this issue has been addressed with the identification of context-related constructs partly retrieved from existing literature, that describe a modelling process for a technology acceptance attempting to explain the main factors influencing people behavioural intention to adopt autonomous vehicle technology. Constructs such as trust, self-efficacy, anxiety, perceived safety and legal regulation have been considered. The main contribution of the study is the detailed exploration on the users’ acceptance of AV. We propose a theoretical model called Autonomous Vehicle Technology Acceptance Model (AVTAM) that gives us a better understanding of what will eventually influence future AV customers. The main findings of this work suggest that users’ safety on the road, the cost associated to the technology and the trust on car manufacturers will play a very important role for large-scale AV adoption.