Theses and Dissertations Collection

The project examines the perceptions of autonomous vehicles in rural communities. The definition used in this study to determine whether respondents were in rural areas came from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and was described as “open countryside and settlements with fewer than 2,500 residents.” A survey was created and distributed to respondents across the United States and 1,247 valid responses were analyzed. Based on the responses, rural respondents were more likely than non-rural respondents to commute further if they owned a self-driving vehicle. Older people and those with lower levels of education tended to have lower levels of trust in self-driving vehicles. Male respondents were associated with a decrease in the relative probability of “never” purchasing an AV over “buy[ing] at some point” but also a decrease in the relative probability of being “unsure” over “buy[ing] at some point” when other variables were held constant. Lastly, rural and non-rural respondents had similar levels of trust when choosing self-driving vehicles over human driven vehicles.