Gender differences in noise concerns about civil drones

Abstract

Rapid technological developments provide people with an increasing number of opportunities for applying civil drones (e.g., rescue operations). However, one crucial aspect for the future use of drones will be their public acceptance. Importantly, drone acceptance is considered to substantially rely on noise concerns. Recent research demonstrated differences between certain groups of individuals (e.g., females vs. males) in their attitudes towards civil drones. By means of a representative telephone survey in Germany (n = 832), we aimed at further investigating the influence of gender on drone acceptance. Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) revealed noise concerns to be the most important of all assessed concerns for explaining female respondents’ attitudes towards civil drones, while concerns about damages/injuries best explained male participants’ attitudes. Moreover, our survey corroborates prior studies by showing males to be less concerned about civil drones than females (e.g., regarding noise). Additionally, we explored whether these effects could have been driven by confounding variables (e.g., drone experience). Thus, the present study highlights aspects of gender differences in concerns about drones which need to be examined further in future research.