Factors Influencing the Use of Autonomous and Shared Autonomous Vehicles in Alberta

Abstract

Autonomous vehicles (AV) are expected to have a wide-ranging affect on traffic congestion, safety, comfort, car ownership, land use and the environment. In this thesis, stated preference survey was designed to examine people’s willingness to give up driving control to AVs and their willingness to use them as shared autonomous vehicles (SAV). The results indicate that Level 3 automation should be skipped and the market should move directly to full automation. People are willing to pay $3529, $2691 and $4349 per year for the fixed cost of AVs with Level 2, 3, and 4 automation. The early owners of AVs are males over 50 years old and the early adaptors of SAVs are males younger than 35 years old. Also, the willingness to use higher levels of automation is attributed to people’s perception towards AVs.