Comparison of travel attitude study methods using online tools: The case of understanding public acceptance of autonomous vehicles

Abstract

With the growing penetration of mobile phones, mobile apps and media platforms offer new ways to conduct travel-related research. The aim of this study is to compare two pairs of quantitative and qualitative research methods that leverage these tools: (1) an online survey versus a mobile chatbot interaction, and (2) an online focus group discussion over a live video conference versus a moderated discussion over a mobile messaging application. As a case study, we investigate the public acceptance of autonomous vehicles (AVs) for public transit in Singapore. 320 participants answered the same five research questions posed across the four methods, which were carried out over the first half of 2021. Across all methods, it was consistently found that there was cautious excitement about shared AVs in Singapore. Nevertheless, there were concerns about the safety of AV technology and uncertainty of how AVs will be implemented in practice. Compared to more conventional tools, the advantages of using mobile messaging apps to conduct travel-related studies are their low cost, scalability, and ease of analyzing resultant data. However, it was more challenging to recruit participants, mainly due to unfamiliarity, uncertainty of time requirements and a need to install the prerequisite mobile app. In chat groups, there was an observed lack of group interaction between participants. Overall, we found that while chatbots and chat groups hosted on mobile messaging apps were potential alternatives to surveys and focus groups to widen participation, there are still some inherent limitations to be overcome.

Keywords

• Online survey
• Mobile apps
• Chatbot
• Video conference
• Focus group
• Chat group