Research On Acceptance Towards Autonomous Vehicles Among The Elderly From The Perspective Of Pedestrians And Users

Finite travel modes among the elderly trigger failures on travelling motility,convenience and accessibility,which greatly affect the happiness of later life.Consequently,extensive attention has been paid to researches on travelling behavior among the elderly people.Autonomous vehicles,an emerging technology,can improve the travelling motility of this group,and provide the possibility for the elderly to improve their travel conditions.But what brings the idea into fruition is whether this group can quickly and widely accept this emerging mode.Hence,before autonomous vehicles are put into large-scale use,it is of huge importance to study the acceptance level of this newly-developing technology,and thus enhancing the travel quality of this group.Therefore,a research on acceptability of autonomous vehicle among the elderly is of great importance to satisfy the travelling demands.In addition to the angles of pedestrian and users,a special factor with Chinese characteristic—face consciousness among the elderly(60 years old and above)is innovatively taken into account in this thesis.As for pedestrian,two hypothetical scenarios are adopted,and variables including ordinal logistic regression analytical attitude,perceived usefulness,trust and perceive risk are utilized to study the acceptability toward the autonomous vehicles.The results show that trust exerts the most remarkable impact on the acceptability,and perceive usefulness under two scenarios has almost zero effect.It is found in variance analysis that five variables such as gender,education,driving license,travel frequency and degree of familiarity have a significant influence on attitude,trust and perceive risk.It is interesting finding that education degree bears no relation to latent variables but whether having a diploma comparatively counts.For users,in this thesis,the structural equation model is employed to investigate the behavioral mechanism of psychological latent variables(such as face consciousness)on the acceptance of autonomous driving.In addition,a hierarchical regression analysis is used to study the explanatory power of the model when an independent variable gradually increases from a manifest variable to a latent one,and to determine key factors affecting acceptance intention.The test results reveal that attitude,perceive usefulness,perceive risk and face consciousness have an obvious impact while trust having a big effect on pedestrian makes almost no difference on drivers.In addition,through the intermediary effect test,it is found that although trust has no direct significant effect on behavior intention,it can have an indirect effect on behavior through perceived risk path,perceived usefulness and attitude path;meanwhile,face consciousness can also influence behavior intention through perceived risk.Finally,combined with the research results of this paper,certain suggestions and measures are proposed to the autonomous vehicle companies and the decision-makers of management departments,aiming to provide scientific basis for effectively promoting the acceptance of self-driving cars by the elderly,and theoretical basis for solving the problem of insufficient mobility of the elderly.