Socio-Demographic Factors Impact on Willingness to Buy and Use Autonomous Vehicles in Tehran

Today, autonomous vehicles are recognized as revolution in people mobility. Despite of many benefits of AVs, distrust is the main barrier to people acceptance. This paper aims to survey the willingness to buy, use in stop-go driving condition and shared use in 22 districts of Tehran through a sample size of 338 individuals. A stated preference questionnaire was designed for this purpose and distributed for the first time in Iran as a developing country. Regarding descriptive analysis, the relationship existence and correlation coefficient were assessed using chi-square test, Cramer's V and Spearman correlation coefficient. Results show 59% willingness and 37% unwillingness to buy of people in this technology, as well as 70% willingness to use in stop-go driving and 60% willingness to shared use. Among the various age groups, people aged 25-44 years are most likely to buy, use in stop go driving and shared use situations. People without a driver's license and a no car ownership are more likely to buy AVs at a reasonable price, there was no significant difference between men and women regarding the willingness to buy, but men (33%) are more likely than women (27%) to use AVs in shared which illustrates the importance of privacy in women. Chi-square test was used to investigate the independence of the dependent variables, indicating that there was a significant and direct correlation between all three variables at the significant level of 0.01. The results could be useful for policymakers' decision making and planning use in future transportation systems.