The implementation of autonomous vehicles by TNCs in Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Barros, Tatiana Neto
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/29742
• topic: Autonomous vehicles; Shared-mobility; Transportation network companies; Motivations; Barriers; Carros autónomos; Mobilidade partilhada; TVDE; Motivações; Barreiras; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

The increasing popularity of shared-mobility services completely reshaped the automotive industry particularly with the introduction of Transportation Network Companies like Uber. This research will mainly focus on the implementation of autonomous vehicles, namely vehicles with automated driving features that do not require human intervention by TNCs in Portugal. The main purpose is to investigate the motivations and barriers that influence people’s decision to prefer an autonomous vehicle over the conventional one when using a TNC as well as understand which demographic market segment is most attracted by this implementation. With this aim, 10 in-depth interviews were carried out as well as an online survey which collected 127 valid answers. Findings showed that, in general, people that use TNCs in Portugal tend to have a positive opinion regarding these companies as well as autonomous vehicles. However, there is still a certain hesitation towards the openness to choose an autonomous vehicle in this industry, mainly explained by privacy issues and its capacity to react to potential external threats. Moreover, people with more than 30 years old were far more receptive to choose an autonomous vehicle in this industry than the younger ones and women showed more resistance towards about the autonomous vehicles than men. Additionally, the majority of respondents believed that the probability of having an accident with these vehicles will decrease and they will be less damaging to the environment.