A Statistical Analysis of Consumers’ Perceptions Towards Automated Vehicles and their Intended Adoption

Emerging automotive and transportation technologies, such as automated vehicles have created revolutionary possibilities with regard to future travel behavior. While autonomous-vehicle development continues to rapidly progress, how quickly the public will accept and adopt autonomous vehicles remains an open question. Using survey data, the authors apply cluster analysis to better understand consumers’ perceptions toward potential benefits and concerns relating to automated vehicles with regard to factors influencing their autonomous-vehicle adoption likelihoods. Four market segments are identified which the authors classify as benefits-dominated, concerns dominated, uncertain, well-informed. A random parameters multinomial logit model is then estimated to identify factors influencing the probability of respondents belonging to one of these four specific market segments. Among other influences (such as socio-economic, and current travel characteristics), the authors find that millennials had a higher probability of belonging to the well-informed market segment, Gen-X-ers have a lower probability of belonging to the uncertain market segment, and baby boomers had a higher probability of belonging to the concerns-dominated market (relative to the golden generation). To gain a further understanding, the authors study the individuals’ expressed likelihood of autonomous vehicle adoption using separate random parameters ordered probit estimations for each of the four market segments. The substantial and statistically significant differences across each automated-vehicle consumer market segment underscores the potentially large impact that different consumer demographics may have on new technology adoption, and the need for targeted marketing to achieve better market-penetration outcomes with regard to autonomous vehicles.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD20 Standing Committee on Social and Economic Factors of Transportation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Menon, Nikhil
  • Zhang, Yu
  • Pinjari, Abdul Rawoof
  • Mannering, Fred
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: 22p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Age groups; Autonomous vehicles; Cluster analysis; Consumer preferences; Demographics; Market assessment; Multinomial logits; Surveys
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01698133
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-03428
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:51PM