Psychological Factors in Self-Coordinating Road Traffic

Abstract

Although the fact that real-world self-coordinating road networks likely converge to suboptimal traffic states has been known for almost a century, the coordination strategy aiming at optimality – social optimization – has remained theoretical and underexposed. Recent technological advances paved the way for implementing this strategy with the help of traveler information systems. How drivers evaluate, perceive, and act upon, in sum, accept this technology is therefore the leading question of this research project. Three studies were designed to investigate the attitudinal, actional, as well as the usage level of acceptance of technology-supported social optimization. The first study empirically tested a framework that describes attitudinal acceptance of this technology. The results indicate that the perceived usefulness of this technology, elicited subjective ambivalence, perceived injustice, a conducive social norm, and image gains due to using this technology constitute influential factors for the behavioral intention to use it. The second study examined how information about contribution to network efficiency and choices of other drivers translate into the concrete action of complying with route proposals that comprise extra travel time. The results suggest that both can be used to persuade drivers to comply with these proposals, rather than just framing the routes in a positive way. The third study investigated experienced utility of routes that were impeded in this way and contained a slow route section. The results suggest that a conducive route segmentation, in particular, optimized endings in terms of speed yield better global affective, perceived speed, temporal, and flow judgments than less conducive route segmentation. The combined results of all three studies suggest that the design of coordinating signals which aim to increase the acceptance of technology that implements the strategy of social optimization of a road network should tackle each of the acceptance levels as they provide potential for promoting effects. Overall this research project made progress in tying together the coordination strategy of social optimization, in particular, technology that implements this strategy and human perception and behavior.