The Devil is in the Details - Trust Development During Initial Usage of an Automated Vehicle

Trust is important for adoption of automated vehicles (AVs) and has therefore become a well-researched topic due to the introduction of more and more automation in AVs. Previous research has identified aspects such as user variabilities, the automation itself and context to affect the users’ level of trust in AVs. Studies have also shown that trust forms through continuous experience with AVs but can decrease in case of incidents with or perceived failures of the automation. However, only a small portion of the research in this area has focused on individual trust formation and to what extent trust formationprocesses differs between different individuals. Therefore, this paper investigates how user trust develops during first-time usage of an automated vehicle. Nineteen participants experienced a fully automated vehicle on a test track and information on the participants’ trust was collected by interviewsand an especially for the experiment developed tool, the ‘Trust Curve’. The Trust Curve was used to understand how the user’s trust changes over-time during initial usage. The findings identified two main trust formation processes; one Inconsistent process, i.e. trust increases and decreases several timesduring the interaction with the AV, and one Consistent process, i.e. trust continuously increases/decreases or are unchanged during the interaction with the AV. Thus, findings indicate that users develop trust in different ways which may lead to implications regarding how users obtain a proper level of trust as well as how to design AVs for different groups of users