Understanding customers’ attitude and intention to use driverless cars

The use of driverless cars is a future trend in road transportation and set to improve quality of life. Although marketing studies on technology acceptance are abundant and cross a variety of contexts, few studies investigate thoroughly the key factors influencing customers’ intention to use, and explicitly demonstrate the mechanisms in which each factor affect the acceptance of driverless cars. This research adds new knowledge to the body of marketing literature and studies in technology acceptance towards driverless cars. Specifically, this study extends cognition-oriented theories by integrating factors such as perceived enjoyment and perceived societal benefits into the new model to explain how individual perceptions impact user attitude and intention to use driverless cars. The research further uses the habit literature and integrates the status quo bias perspective to hypothesise that in addition to cognitive factors, incumbent system habit as a subconscious source of inertia that contribute to the resistance of adopting driverless cars lies in the use of a traditional automobile vehicle. Drawing on qualitative evidence from 13 interviewees, the key themes that influence customers’ perceptions towards driverless cars are disclosed, including perceived travel efficiency, enjoyment, helpfulness, and societal benefits. On the other side, technological issues, hacking and privacy issues, laggard regulations and policies, and concerns about the deterioration in driving skills are barriers to customers’ intention to use. The proposed conceptual model is empirically assessed using data collected from 493 potential customers through an online survey. The results illustrate the significant influences, in descending order, of attitude, perceived enjoyment, concerns, perceived travel efficiency and gender on customers’ intention to use, and also confirm perceived enjoyment, perceived societal benefits and age as strong factors in consumers’ attitude toward driverless cars. Incumbent system habit influences two paths among variables: 1) dampens the positive relationship between attitude and intention to use, and 2) strengthens the negative relationship between concerns and intention to use. Attitude is verified as a mediator between the perceived enjoyment and intention to use. Age differences are also revealed. There are practical implications too for research and development managers in the manufacturing process, and for marketing managers in the retail market