Living in a City Where Automated Taxis are Operating and Using Them: Does This Affect Consumers' Preferences?

In this paper we study the impact of having used an automated taxi (AT) or simply living in a city where ATs are operating on users' preferences for and attitudes toward ATs. This paper aims then to contribute to the research on ATs and on the impact of experiencing innovations. Data were collected in three major cities in China where ATs were in operation (AT cities), and other major cities where only normal taxis (NTs) were operating (NT cities). A stated choice (SC) experiment was built that included level-of-services attributes, specific AT in-vehicle features, levels of AT adoption and customers' reviews. In addition, a set of attitudinal statements was included to measure injunctive norms, hedonic motivation and trust. Hybrid choice models were estimated accounting for intra-individual correlation. Results show that living in a city where AT are operating does not affect the willingness to pay for travel and waiting time, which is an expected result. But those living in AT cities compared with those living in NT cities are willing to pay just half the amount to have the in-vehicle feature "change destination during the trip" and around three times as much for good reviews about ATs for trips less than 30 min. Interestingly, trust has a positive and significant impact on the choice of AT only for those living in NT cities, while hedonic motivation is significant only for those living in AT cities. Finally, we did not find differences between those who had used an AT and those who had never used it.