Adoption of Autonomous Vehicles with Endogenous Safety Concerns: A Recursive Bivariate Ordered Probit Model

It is generally believed that safer roads will be a major benefit of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Recent AV-involved accidents in road tests and empirical evidence, however, suggest that travelers might still be concerned about the safety of a ride in an AV. It is further unknown whether and to what extent the travelers’ safety concern will hinder or promote the adoption of AVs. This paper makes a rigorous attempt to ascertain the causality between the travelers’ safety concern about the AV technology and their AV adoption behavior, in addition to exploring the determinants thereof. To this end, a recursive bivariate ordered probit model is estimated, which explicitly accounts for the endogeneity of safety concern in the AV adoption behavior. Drawing from a stated preference survey in the state of California, the authors find a significant negative association between safety concern and AV adoption. Important insights are also obtained into the impact on shaping travelers’ behavior of several socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, current travel behavior factors, and vehicle decision factors and attributes.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB40 Standing Committee on Transportation Demand Forecasting.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Nazari, Fatemeh
  • Noruzoliaee, Mohamadhossein
  • Mohammadian, Abolfazl (Kouros)
• 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: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 9p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Attitudes; Behavior; Decision making; Intelligent vehicles; Probits; Stated preferences; Surveys; Vehicle safety
• Geographic Terms: California
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01697529
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-02998
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:51PM