User Acceptance of Shared Autonomous Vehicles

A dissertation is proposed to explore user acceptance of shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs). SAVs are facing limited user acceptance. To systematically tackle the user acceptance barriers of SAVs, the main problem can be disintegrated into two sub-problems of user acceptance of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and ridesharing. The comfort of the ride experience in AVs is a determinant of user acceptance. Understanding the influential factors and developing methodologies to quantify human comfort in AVs are essential to facilitating future research to improve human comfort in AVs. The current pooled rideshare (PR) service closely resembles the anticipated future of SAVs. Understanding why users prefer or refuse to use PR at the current stage prepares SAVs for broader acceptance in the future. Until now, a series of peer-reviewed publications have been published to achieve the technical goals. Two simulator-based user studies were conducted to instrument the research on human comfort in AVs. Statistical analysis was performed to identify the crucial vehicular behavioral factors of human comfort in AVs. The influential factors of human comfort in AVs and methodologies to quantify and detect human comfort in AVs were investigated. Two survey-based studies were deployed to facilitate the investigation of user acceptance of rideshare services. The influential factors of users' willingness to consider PR were explored and identified, and the choice behaviors in ridesharing services were comprehensively modeled and analyzed. The proposed research answers a series of fundamental questions regarding the user acceptance of SAVs. For the branch of user acceptance of AVs, the research generated guidelines for improving passenger comfort in AVs by identifying a series of autonomous driving factors of passenger comfort. The research also provides fundamental tools to estimate human comfort levels for future research and in-AV applications. For the branch of user acceptance of PR, the research provided user acceptance-aware vehicle, service, and policy design insights that can promote the usage of PR.