Acceptance of Automated Cars and Shared Mobility Services: Towards a Holistic Analysis for Sustainable Mobility Systems

Understanding public acceptance is pivotal for integrating automated cars (AC) and shared mobility services (SMS) into mobility systems. This paper presents a holistic framework and demonstrates its application based on a dataset (N = 419; EU-focused sub-sample N = 289) originating from an online survey, capturing metrics like socio-demographics, mobility habits, and perceptions. Acceptance was measured as willingness to use (WTU), and links to willingness to pay (WTP) were examined. A two-stage approach was conducted: non-parametric screening (Chi-square, Spearman’s rank correlation) and proportional-odds ordinal logistic models. Results show that 25.6% would likely use AC and 21.1% would use SMS. WTP for SMS is positively associated with WTU (p < 0.001), whereas WTP and WTU are not statistically related for AC. Perceived usefulness and ease of use are positively related to WTU for both AC and SMS (all p < 0.01). The acceptance of SMS correlates positively with the acceptance of AC (p < 0.001), and the preference for combining SMS with public transport (PT) is associated with higher acceptance. The ordinal logistic models confirm these patterns after adjustment, with perceptions/experience and (for SMS) pricing and PT-related variables remaining significant, while several socio-demographic effects attenuate. The cross-country results indicate modest acceptance in Austria and the UK, aligning with recent European evidence.