Public Acceptance to utilize Autonomous Vehicles AV’s in the United Arab Emirates, An Empirical Study

The new era of the Autonomous Vehicles AV technology is an essential phenomenon that shapes the Smart Cities transformation in the near future. Autonomous Vehicles AV’s (AV for short) provides new concept of mobility solutions to the public that are yet to arrive soon in the middle east countries. United Arab Emirates UAE being one of the leading countries in middle east in terms of AVs tests is seriously taking steps towards the implementation of AV in Public Transportation, nevertheless, very few studies have taken serious research on how the ordinary public are ready to accept and use the AV Transportation. This paper analyzes the main influential factors that shape the acceptance and perception of the public to use AV transportation particularly in UAE. A total of twelve factors extracted from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), in addition to Behavioral and Non-behavioral Theories were screened out. Some of these factors were found to significantly affect the AV acceptance and intention to use. This paper focused on Technology Acceptance, Technology Trust, Anxiety, Perceived Safety, Reliability, Performance Expectancy, Privacy, Security, Social Influence, Psychological Factors, Efforts Expectancy, and Legal Liability as some of the main influential factors that shape the acceptance and perception of the Public to use AV in UAE.