What Are the Determinants of Initial Trust in Automated Driving?

Because driving automation is quickly increasing, humans’ relation to automated driving evolves accordingly. Trust in automated driving has been shown to strongly correlate with drivers’ acceptance of such systems. There is still much to be learned about which factors determine trust before any interaction with Highly Automated Driving (HAD) systems. Theoretical trust described in automation models proposes several factors to explain how trust builds before and during interactions with automation. Using 844 answers collected through an online survey, this article aims to propose a new scale specifically designed to evaluate initial trust in automated driving. Moreover, we also measure the other factors linked to drivers’ initial level of trust in HAD by operationalizing the trust components proposed by Hoff and Bashir’s theoretical trust model. To better describe what determines trust in HAD, a linear model based on the collected data is proposed. The model not only weights the factors determining trust but is also able to predict the level of trust considering these factors.