Extension of an adoption model to evaluate autonomous vehicles acceptance

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) can provide safe, clean and efficient mobility by using advanced communication technologies to create an unprecedented revolution in transportation. Acceptance of AVs has a key role in their successful implementation. Most researchers have used Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to identify latent factors affecting, which focus only on individuals' internal schema of beliefs without considering the external factors of acceptance. The current study, uses Trialability (TR), Observability (OB) extracted from Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) theory, Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social Influence (SI) extracted from UTAUT, as well as Perceived Risk (PR), Environmental Concerns (EC) and Consumer Innovativeness (CI)) to identify a wider set of latent factors. A stated preference survey conducted to this purpose in Tehran allowed collecting 641 responses. Considering the latent nature of research variables, Structural Equation Modeling is applied. Results show that PE, EE, PR, OB, SI, TR, CI and EC affect acceptance in decreasing order of regression weights, an explain 72.5% of the variance in the dependent variable..