Measuring trust of autonomous vehicles: A development and validation study

Abstract

Recent advances in technology have improved the ability of vehicles to act autonomously, thereby enabling the implementation of these systems into the lives of the everyday consumer. For example, in the past three years nearly several major vehicle manufacturer, supplier, and technology company have announced projects involving autonomous vehicles (AVs). While the notion of AVs has been popular within the military, the urgency to make them commonplace has gathered pace as companies outside the auto industry have illustrated the feasibility and benefits that AVs offer. However, in order to predict user adoption of these autonomous features, attitudes towards them must be understood. Thus, the purpose of the present in-progress study is to develop and validate a scale to quantify trust towards autonomous vehicles. Upon the completion of data collection, the data will be subjected to a factor analysis. It is hypothesized that the scale ratings will converge to a single underlying dimension. It is also hypothesized that there will be differences in trust among the levels of vehicle autonomy.