Abstract:
There has been a growing interest in Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology worldwide over
the last decade. Nevertheless, various studies have noted some potential sociopsychological challenges to AV use and ownership. These challenges can be mitigated by
designing AV that accounts for users’ personalities, such as their perceived control and
power. The complex relationship between personal control and automation, two concepts
that intuitively sound contradictory to each other, is less explored. In this study, two
dimensions of personal control, the desire for control and the driver locus of control, were
hypothesized to influence the attitude toward AV. The relationships were moderated by
power distance, a cultural factor related to one’s sense of control. The hypotheses were
tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach via the Analysis of Moment
Structures (AMOS) software. As many as 457 respondents from two sample groups,
Hungarian and Indonesian drivers were gathered via an online questionnaire and compared. The results reveal that 1) the higher the desire for control, the more negative the
attitude toward AV 2) the higher the external driver locus of control, the more positive
the attitude toward AV 3) the more positive the attitude toward AV, the higher the intention to use AV and 4) power distance moderates the relationship between the desire for
control and the attitude toward AV, such that the negative effect of the desire for control
is strengthened in high power distance orientation. This study also provides theoretical
contributions and managerial implications, especially to AV designers.
