The Influence of Autonomous Vehicle Characteristics on Customers’ Cognitive Evaluation and Purchase Intention

This study examines how the key characteristics of autonomous vehicles (AVs)—safety, convenience, efficiency, enjoyment, and facilitating conditions—affect consumers’ cognitive evaluations, namely perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), and perceived risk (PR), and how these factors influence purchase intention. Building on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and its extensions, an online survey was conducted with 586 adults residing in China who represent potential AV consumers. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 27 and AMOS 23, employing reliability tests, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM), and bootstrapping to test mediation effects. The results reveal that PU and PEOU serve as key mediators strengthening purchase intention across all AV characteristics, while PR shows a significant mediating effect only for safety. This indicates that safety directly alleviates consumer anxiety and uncertainty, whereas convenience, efficiency, enjoyment, and facilitating conditions primarily enhance positive utility perceptions. The findings advance theoretical understanding by integrating positive and negative factors in high-risk technology adoption and provide actionable guidance for practice, suggesting that governments establish robust safety certification and cyber security standards and that firms focus on user-friendly design, transparent safety data, and experiential marketing to accelerate consumer adoption of AVs.