Autonomous Self-Driving Cars: How Enhanced Utilitarian Accessibility Alters Consumer Purchase Intentions

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are anticipated to prevent approximately 90% of road accidents (Fagnant & Kockelman, 2015), however, there will still be occasions where AVs face unavoidable collisions. Yet, AVs can be pre-programmed to make split-second life- saving decisions. Nonetheless, the question remains as to whether they should be programmed to maximise the number of lives saved (utilitarian) or protect the passenger at all costs. Importantly, experimental research by Bonnefon et al. (2016) revealed a ‘social dilemma’ – where respondents exhibit a preference for other people to own utilitarian cars but want to purchase protective cars for themselves. Here we argue that this result was simply an artefact of limited accessibility to utilitarian information (Kusev et al., 2016; Martin et al., 2017). Accordingly, our research reveals that accessibility (agency involvement) to utilitarian information predicts respondents moral and purchasing judgments about utilitarian and passenger protective AVs for others and themselves (agency type).