Building Trust in Intelligent Automation: Insights into Structural Assurance Mechanisms for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

Intelligent automation is increasingly taking over tasks that normally require substantial human experience and intuition. However, for individuals to delegate full control to applications like autonomous vehicles (AVs), they need to establish sufficient initial trust in the automation\u27s functionality, reliability and transparency. Manufacturers and external institutions may build users\u27 initial trust by providing structural assurance. Answering calls for a more context-specific, theoretically substantiated investigation of trust in AVs, we investigate how five different forms of structural assurance can be designed and how effective they are in trust-building: Technical, provider, legal, certifier and social protection. Extending previous, survey-based research, we conducted a choice-based conjoint experiment (n = 220). We find that external structural assurance in the form of legal and certifier protection may even outperform manufacturers\u27 trust-building efforts. This is especially the case for some user groups, as a cluster analysis reveals individuals\u27 heterogeneous preferences for structural assurance mechanisms