Acceptance of driverless shuttles in pilot and non-pilot cities

Recently some US cities have launched pilot driverless shuttle programs, testing driverless shuttles on their roads. Using data collected in April 2020 from respondents in eight US cities, four with pilot driverless shuttle programs and four non-pilot control cities, we investigate the factors associated with residents’ attitudes towards driverless shuttles. We use confirmatory factor analysis to construct four latent variables representing respondent attitudes: safety confidence, software security concerns, technology familiarity and interest, and preference for human control. Then, we estimate levels of adoption using a structural equation model-based multigroup analysis. We find that individuals in pilot cities not only demonstrate greater acceptance of driverless shuttle programs but also have different determinants of acceptance compared with those in non-pilot cities. Notably, the effects of local transit access on driverless shuttle acceptance vary between pilot and non-pilot cities. These findings provide early insight into how driverless shuttles may be accepted by the broader population and what factors may influence the effectiveness of driverless shuttles as public transportation over the long term.