Understanding social attitudes towards autonomous driving: a perspective from Chinese citizens

Given the rapid advancement of autonomous driving technology, discerning public willingness to pay and anticipated driving behavior for autonomous vehicles is crucial for their successful promotion, hastened adoption, and enhanced safety in forthcoming mixed autonomy traffic scenarios. This study employs a comprehensive online survey to scrutinize the factors influencing these objectives, encompassing socioeconomic and demographic elements, driving experience, and attitudes towards autonomous vehicles. Leveraging a sophisticated discrete choice model-the mixed logit model with heterogeneity in means and variances-this analysis unveils significant impacts of public social attitudes towards autonomous vehicles and current driving behavior on their willingness to pay for and behavior around autonomous vehicles. This paper’s contributions span theoretical modeling, experimental design, and estimation outcomes, offering valuable insights for policymakers and automobile manufacturers.