“Baby, I Can’t Drive My Car”: How Controllability Mediates the Relationship between Personality and the Acceptance of Autonomous Vehicles?

Autonomous Vehicles (AV) hold a significant promise in creating a positive disruption of transportation. However, the majority of people perceive AV with fear, anxiety and public resistance. Our study aims to examine how controllability mediates the relationships between main personality traits (sensation seeking and big five), and AV acceptance. In a cross-sectional study, we found that low desirability of control and high external driving locus of control are associated with high AV acceptance. Moreover. We found that individuals high in sensation seeking, perceive high external driving locus of control, and low desirability to control, which in turn leads to low AV acceptance. In addition, the desirability of control and external driving locus mediated the relationships between extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism with AV acceptance. Overall, our results support the hypothesized model and suggest that for people to trust AV they need to have some sense of controlling the vehicle.