Owning or sharing, a private ride or a shared ride A study into the future trend in adoption and usage of autonomous vehicles

Developments of autonomous vehicles progress fast. Within a few decades people will be able to drive an autonomous vehicle (AV) (Litman, 2018). Apart from that, shared mobility is evolving and the population is interested to use shared mobility (Nazari, Noruzoliaee, & Mohammadian, 2018). These developments will not only change the travel behavior of individuals, but also the transportation sector as a whole (Harb et al., 2018). This research investigates people’s willingness to adopt or use different kinds of autonomous vehicles. Mid-term and short-term decisions are investigated. A stated choice experiment (SCE) is used to research mid-term decisions. The experiment takes a look at people’s willingness to adopt an owned AV or shared autonomous mobility. Short-term decisions are tested with a stated adaptation choice experiment (SACE). The choice experiment investigates people’s interest to use different types of shared autonomous transportation modes. The following alternatives are investigated: single occupancy shared AV, multiple occupancy shared autonomous ride or autonomous public transportation. Before answering the choice tasks of the SACE, the respondents are asked to describe four reference trips. The reference trips are used to generate personalized choice tasks. Not only choice experiments are used in this research. The research also investigates attitudes, in order to research the influence of attitudes on people’s decisions.
Both choice experiments and the attitudes are integrated in a questionnaire. The questionnaire is distributed via the online platform LimeSurvey. The answers of 902 respondents are analyzed with a hybrid choice model. The model simultaneously estimates the influence of the attitudes on the decisions. The results indicate that the respondents are almost equally interested in adoption of owned AVs as shared autonomous mobility. The attributes related to financial aspects and the attribute waiting time have a lot of influence on the decisions. The attitude towards sustainability positively influences the decision to adopt shared autonomous mobility. As for short-term usage of AVs, the respondents are most interested in usage of single occupancy shared AVs. The travel costs and the waiting time have a lot of influence on the decisions. The attitude towards sustainability positively influences the decision to use an AV shared with strangers and autonomous public transportation.