Road tests of self-driving vehicles: Affective and cognitive pathways in acceptance formation

摘要

We focus on the pathways (affective vs. cognitive) that guide people's acceptance of road tests (ART) for self-driving vehicles (SDVs) and behavioral intention (BI) to use SDVs, and propose and test a psychological model to explain these two behavioral responses (i.e., ART and BI) based on the trust heuristic and affect heuristic. These heuristics suggest that affective factors (social trust, positive affect, and negative affect) can directly determine ART and BI following the affective pathway or indirectly influence them through two cognitive responses (perceived benefit and risk) following the cognitive pathway. We conducted a field study involving a Level 3 automated vehicle (AV), invited 300 participants to experience how an AV works in the self-driving mode, and collected their affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses related to SDVs before and after the AV experience. The AV experience increased the psychological model's explanatory power for perceived benefit, perceived risk, and ART. The affective pathway (vs. cognitive pathway) played a more important role in forming BI and ART. BI was predicted by perceived benefit, social trust, and positive affect, while ART was predicted by social trust and positive affect. The predictive ability of the model for BI and ART was validated. We discuss implications of the results for theory and practice.