Assessing Pedestrian Trust in Autonomous Vehicles: a Comparative Study of Immersive Virtual Reality and Non-Immersive Video Media

Abstract Trust is crucial for integrating autonomous vehicles (AVs) into society, with various studies examining pedestrian trust through methods like images, texts, videos, virtual reality (VR), and field studies. The impact of these representational methods on trust assessment remains uncertain. Our study conducted a 2 (media types: VR vs. video) by 7 (vehicle behavior trials) within-subject experiment with 50 adults to compare pedestrian trust, risk perception, and comprehensibility in immersive VR and non-immersive video settings. The results showed VR enhanced subjective judgments like trust and risk perception in general, even though participants’ understanding of vehicle behaviors is statistically the same. In addition, representing scenarios in an immersive VR or non-immersive video environment does not influence the relative effectiveness of vehicle behaviors on the trust assessment. The findings indicate the necessity of selecting appropriate media in trust studies depending on the research purpose (e.g., general assessment vs. comparative effectiveness) and validate the use of non-immersive video media to compare trust differences due to vehicle behavior variations. This research provides guidance for future AV-pedestrian trust studies in media type selection, particularly for meta-analyses aiming to consolidate findings from varied research by highlighting the critical role of media choice in trust assessments.