Cultural influence on autonomous vehicles acceptance

TL;DR

This paper investigates how national culture, as captured by Hofstede's six dimensions, relates to the acceptance of autonomous vehicles (AVs) by synthesizing 12 studies across 14 countries. It meta-analyzes correlations between cultural dimensions and AV acceptance, finding potential positive effects for $PDI^+$, $UAI^+$, and $LTO^+$, and potential negative or neutral effects for $IDV^-$, $MAS^0$, and $IND^0$, though results vary by country. The authors discuss mediating factors such as risk perception, social influence, gender, and ease of use, highlighting trust-building and social context as important for adoption. The work demonstrates that culture plays a meaningful role in AV acceptance and calls for more focused cross-cultural studies to guide policy and design decisions for AV deployment.

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles and other intelligent transport systems have been evolving rapidly and are being increasingly deployed worldwide. Previous work has shown that perceptions of autonomous vehicles and attitudes towards them depend on various attributes, including the respondent's age, education level and background. These findings with respect to age and educational level are generally uniform, such as showing that younger respondents are typically more accepting of autonomous vehicles, as are those with higher education levels. However the influence of factors such as culture are much less clear cut. In this paper we analyse the relationship between acceptance of autonomous vehicles and national culture by means of the well-known Hofstede cultural model.

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: Hofstede model scores vs. AV acceptance