# Public Perception of the Introduction of Autonomous Vehicles
## 3 Results  
A total of 115 participants completed the survey; 15 of the respondents added further commentary about the study. They suggested changes that might be made in the following longitudinal surveys. Approximately 75 participants reported their expectations surrounding the benefits and risks we might face during the transition to increased use of AVs. After inspecting the data, 7 responses were removed due to incomplete answers, resulting in a final sample of 108 responses. Although 7 entries were deleted, the remaining sample size of 108 is sufficient enough to perform the analysis. Participants' responses to the question related to prior knowledge of AVs revealed that the majority of them (more than 90%) have already heard about autonomous or self-driving vehicles before participating in this survey. However, only 30% of respondents have previously seen AVs, as seen in Figure 3. Furthermore, the respondents' age and level of education serve as the key measures for comparison when examining their AV-related concerns, since these two characteristics were identified as having a significant impact on respondents' perceptions of AVs, as seen earlier [28]. Therefore, these two factors can be compared to the initial question of the participants' prior knowledge of AVs. Figure 4 shows the age groups of the participants compared to their prior knowledge of the term \"autonomous vehicle\". The above-35 age group had the largest proportion of respondents. However, for the younger age groups, there was a lower proportion of those who had never heard about AVs compared to those who have at least heard of them; those  
aged 18-25 years comprised approximately 20% of the respondents compared to around 39% respondents in the 26-35-year-old age group who had heard about and/or seen AVs. It is worth noting that the 26-35 age group had the highest subset of those who reported having seen AVs in real life. Additionally, the initial question of the participants' prior knowledge of AVs can be also compared to their respective highest levels of education. As shown in Figure 5, there is a clear correlation between the level of education and an awareness of AV technology. Two further questions were asked to gauge the respondents' interest regarding the preferred level of autonomy. Table 3 presents the percentage of each AV level accepted by respondents along with the directional hypothesis that the average acceptance of AVs is higher than level 2 (partial automation). Based on Table 3, the majority of respondents were more interested in having an automated driving system in their vehicles and less likely to buy a fully automated vehicle at level 5. Most frequently, respondents reported  
Figure 4: Comparison of age group and prior knowledge of AVs. Figure 5: Comparison of education level and prior knowledge of AVs. that they would buy a partially automated vehicle at level 4 (36.11%); this was followed by the preference for a partially automated vehicle at level 3 (24.07%). A one-tailed _t_-test also showed that the acceptance of AVs is extremely significantly higher than level 2 in relation to the preferred level and the willingness to buy, with _p_-values of 1.56 \(\times\) 10\({}^{-12}\) and 9.9 \(\times\) 10\({}^{-11}\), respectively. The cumulative percentage of the preferred levels, from level 3 to level 5, derives an acceptance percentage of 70.37%. If we compare that with some of the other investigations, like \"Why travelers trust and accept self-driving cars: an empirical study\" [35], then we can see that the acceptance level is 84.4%. The difference can be explained through the fact that participants in that survey were young Chinese college students; the results cannot be generalized. Our survey also shows that young and educated people are more inclined towards the transition because they are better informed.