A Microscopic Analysis of the Relationship Between Prior Knowledge About Self-Driving Cars and the Public Acceptance: A Survey in the US

Abstract Previous studies have shown that the level of awareness of SDVs is a deciding factor that affects the public attitude towards this emerging technology; however, none of these studies focuses on understanding the relationship between these two variables. Thus, this study utilizes a questionnaire survey with the objective of drawing the relationship between the public attitude and level of knowledge. A total of 2447 complete responses were revised from participants from the US. The results show that people with prior knowledge about SDVs are more likely to travel on SDVs. However, participants who know a bit about SDVs were the most likely to travel on SDVs when compared with participants who had no knowledge and participants who know a lot about SDVs. In addition, the analysis shows that the relationship between the level of knowledge and the level of acceptance of SDVs is not linear but rather parabolic.