Stakeholder analysis

Several scholars reveal the impact of AVs on various actors’ travel behavior by using different methods, such as SP surveys, agent-based modeling, economic models, or empirical experiments [25, 46, 151].

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The stakeholders are identified by their relevance to the topic and their ability to explore the viewpoints on AV acceptance. The stakeholders are divided into four groups: users, legislators, operators, and manufacturers, as shown in Figure 6-2.

Figure 6-2. Stakeholders in the PSAV era The users

The literature shows that the potential users of AVs are diverse depending on several factors, such as the travelers’ preferences, the trip characteristics, and the individual features [133, 152]. People’s (i.e., the users of AVs) acceptability is connected to the service characteristics, such as speed, capacity, comfort, convenience, acceptable waiting time, privacy, safety, security, cost, onboard features, and the ease of use by disabled people and people without driving license [146].Not the group of car users alone but all travelers are going to be influenced by the introduction of AVs [8]. Thus, people could be interested to use AVs for several reasons: minimizing the travel time [153, 154], removing the driving tension [46, 151], increasing safety [142], available multitasking options on board [115], or having a reliable [155], more comfortable [90, 156], and cheaper transport mode [6, 157]. People’s acceptability of AVs is impacted by technophobia [158], and the level of acceptance is varied based on gender [159], disabled and elderly people [41, 147], commuters [18, 160], and high income [25, 152].

The benefits of using AVs are for all travelers; thus, the users of PSAV include almost all groups of people where the users’ objectives and criteria to adopt PSAV are presented, as shown in Table 6-1.

The legislators

The group of legislators includes the policymakers, who are entitled to improve people’s overall mobility [145, 158] as well as to collect the revenues [161]. The legislators formulate and issue laws and regulations that organize the transport sector and the connection with other relevant sectors, such as the environment, economy, labor, health, police, and industrial bodies.

Laws and regulations must be followed by all stakeholders to ensure the achievement of certain objectives through different actions, such as building a road or adopting a new technology [162]. The top-level legislator is the government and its representative bodies, like ministries, while the low-level representatives are the ministries’ branches, such as regional authorities,

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municipalities, and local authorities. Legislators are concerned in decreasing the expenditures on infrastructure maintenance, construction, consuming lands [163, 164], saving lives, – thus minimizing the demand on the health sector [164] [147] [165], traffic police [164], and insurers – protecting the environment Liu et al. [166], the mobility across borders, increasing people’s satisfaction in traveling [159], protecting people’s privacy, raising the level of security, and increasing the gross domestic product (GDP) [167, 168]. It is worth mentioning that the adoption of PSAV should be in coordination with the international laws to facilitate traveling across state borders without problems (i.e., consistent policies are needed) [141]. The liabilities for accidents should be discussed and defined between the parties, where potential technical problems and human responsibilities must be determined [142] [169]. The increase of people’s mobility and accessibility aims to raise their productivity [170]. The growth of the GDP is influenced by various sectors and is not connected exclusively to PSAV, as said by Clements and Kockelman [164].

Examining the adoption of PSAV is the main goal; thus, certain objectives and criteria are presented to be evaluated by legislator bodies, as shown in Table 6-1. PSAV impacts different aspects of life, where the legislators’ role is crucial in defining the consequences of PSAV introduction on the stakeholders.

The operators

The group of operators includes organizations that operate and support the transport sector based on the laws and policies [171]. Such operators are private and public transport companies, associations, and infrastructure management agencies. The associations (e.g., taxi, public transport, private transport, freight transport, and car-sharing associations) collaborate in defining the mobility strategies because they represent the workers of the transport sector.

The associations have an essential part in implementing a strategic mobility plan (i.e., short and long plans) set by the legislators. Public transport operators are the organizers of the public transport sector (i.e., tram, train, bus, and metro), who deal with the management of the fleet, the demand, and the usage methods. The operators of private transport deal with setting the necessary rules for certain services, such as taxi and car-sharing. The infrastructure management agencies manage and supervise the infrastructure that operators use, such as roads, rails, and amenities.

The operators regulate a transport sector assuring compliance with the legislation enacted by the legislators. The introduction of AVs adds a new operator to the market, where each operator tries to maximize its profits with low expenditures. Therefore, regulatory rules, technical standards, and strategic management tools are needed to operate the transport system efficiently [171] [172]. In current research, a set of objectives is developed to investigate the operators’ perception of PSAV, as shown in Table 6-1.

Each operator tries to have more demand. Since PSAV increases people’s mobility and accessibility, the potential groups of people who can travel (e.g., those without a driving license) are expanded [173] [41]. Moreover, the connection between different transport modes (i.e., connectivity) is enhanced with the presence of PSAV, such as using PSAV for the last mile of the travel [43]. The number of trips might increase as the access to transportation becomes easier, and PSAV provides higher accessibility than other motorized modes (i.e., regular cars and public transport). The operators of PSAV should maximize their supply to

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fulfill the generated demand on the PSAV era. Moreover, PSAV increases the efficiency of road networks [165] and decreases the number of accidents, which leads to a reduction in the money paid for maintenance and insurance, as well [169] [142].

The manufacturers

Car manufacturers, technology suppliers, insurers, and fuel suppliers represent the manufacturers. In addition, manufacturers seek for alternatives to increase the travelers’ trust in using the new technology by raising the level of safety and security as well as by ensuring high privacy [142] [143]. The manufacturers aim to increase their revenues by selling/operating a fleet of AVs. However, the user benefits should be a concern of the manufacturers. In the AV industry, continuous development and innovation are required to maximize revenues and to stay on the market [12, 141]. Having the travelers’ trust to use PSAV depends on the provision of sufficient supply (i.e., the fleet of vehicles) [172, 174], and reliable vehicles [155]. The liability for accidents is connected to different parties, such as operators, users, and manufacturers, depending on the type of the accident/failure [141, 165, 175]. Davey [169]

shows that the liability should be put on insurers rather than on manufacturers, while the insurers could be connected to manufacturers or operators. Determining the impact of AVs on the energy suppliers is uncertain because it is connected to the travel time perception in AVs.

The energy demand increases if AVs are powered by fuel rather than electricity. Several scholars demonstrate potential reduction in the fuel consumption in the AVs era, such as Lee and Kockelman [176], Chen et al. [177], and Mersky and Samaras [178].

Table 6-1 presents the manufacturers’ main objectives and criteria with a focus on the car manufacturers and technology suppliers as the main players on the market. The insurers’

objective is connected to the reduction in accidents and having other types of insurance policy, such as theft and malfunction insurance. While the fuel suppliers’ objectives are connected to the increase in the demand for traveling (i.e., VMT and the number of trips).