Acceptance of Shared Automated Vehicles

This thesis examines what shapes UK private car owners' willingness to use high-speed, fully driverless (SAE Level 4) Shared Automated Vehicles (SAVs). SAVs could reduce congestion, emissions, and private car ownership, but uptake depends on understanding what current drivers want from such a service. Existing acceptance research has focused on low-speed automated shuttles running fixed routes with on-board operators, which leaves high-speed, fully driverless services largely unexamined. This research extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) by adding two constructs, Service Quality and Trust, and tests the extended model through a mixed-methods design.

The first phase used an online asynchronous focus group with twenty-one UK private car owners to surface driver attitudes and requirements. Qualitative analysis confirmed Service Quality and Trust as central factors and produced context-specific indicators including Shared Space Quality, Security, and Trusting Co-passengers. The second phase tested the extended model in a survey of 351 participants. Each participant viewed simulated SAV interiors (Private, Communal, and Flexible Ride-Sharing) through passive monoscopic Virtual Reality (VR) video. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) showed Service Quality to be the strongest predictor of behavioural intention. Performance Expectancy and Facilitating Conditions also significantly predicted intention. Hedonic Motivation and Price Value had strong indirect effects mediated through Service Quality. The direct paths from Trust and Social Influence were not statistically significant under this VR-based setup.

The final phase assessed whether passive monoscopic VR is suitable to deploy across the range of devices participants bring to remote studies. Presence was measured using the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ). Screen size moderated the subjective experience: desktop viewing produced significantly higher general presence and realism scores, while smartphone viewing produced the lowest. Device type is therefore a confounding variable that remote VR-based consumer research needs to control for. Taken together, the results show that conventional technology acceptance models miss what matters most for SAV adoption when they ignore service design. Encouraging private car owners to switch to shared automated transport will require attention to flexible interior layouts, privacy, and comfort, not just to the underlying vehicle technology.