Acceptance of Automated Shuttles—Application and Extension of the UTAUT-2 Model to Wizard-of-Oz Automated Driving in Real-Life Traffic

Automated shuttles can make public transport more attractive and sustainable. Still, their successful implementation requires a high level of acceptance among users. This study investigates the impact of the predictors performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, and perceived risk of The Unified Theory of Acceptance (UTAUT)-2 on the behavioral intention to use automated shuttles. In earlier work, UTAUT-2 has already been successfully applied to study the acceptance of autonomous public transport. Here, we employed the UTAUT-2 to assess acceptance of a Wizard-of-Oz automated shuttle in real-life traffic, in a study with 35 participants, before and after a first ride and after a second ride on which two incidents occurred. The results show that behavioral intention to use automated shuttles is high even before the first ride and remains high after experiencing automated driving. Performance expectancy was the only significant predictor of behavioral intention for all measurement time points. The explanatory power of the model almost doubles from pre-ride to post-ride. The results indicate a crucial role of performance expectancy for the acceptance of automated shuttles at the current stage of implementation and provide guidance for a successful development and implementation of autonomous public transport.