Why do they trust it? Determinants of the 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. Nonetheless, there is currently a lack of specific questionnaires to assess drivers’ level of trust in Highly Automated Driving (HAD). Moreover, little is known about which factors determine trust before any interaction with HAD systems. Theoretical trust in automation models propose several factors to explain how trust builds before and during interactions with automation. Using 844 answers collected through an online survey, this paper aims to propose a new scale designed to evaluate initial trust in automated driving. Moreover, we also measure other factors linked to drivers’ initial level of trust in HAD by operationalizing the trust components proposed by Hoff and Bashir (2015)’s theoretical trust model. In order 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.