CoopQ: Questionnaire for measuring the subjective evaluation of cooperation in road traffic encounters

Abstract

In nowadays traffic, most encounters of road users are highly regulated. Nevertheless, traffic situations arise that are not explicitly regulated and therefore require communication and cooperation. This will also be true if self-driving vehicles enter our traffic system. It is therefore of great importance that self-driving vehicles are able to react to and show cooperative behavior. Exactly how humans cooperate in traffic is not fully understood yet. The systematic study of cooperative behavior requires appropriate tools and measures. We contribute to the development of tools by developing a questionnaire that assesses the subjective evaluation of cooperation in a traffic encounter. In this work, we present a first version of this questionnaire, which is divided into two parts: The first part of the questionnaire is intended to measure whether a given encounter between road users could be considered cooperation, and the second part of the questionnaire is intended to evaluate the encounter. Based on a literature survey, 39 items, which cover different aspects of cooperation, like altruism, interference, costs and benefits, were formulated for the first part of the questionnaire, i.e. for assessing the occurrence of cooperation. For the second part, i.e. for the evaluation of a given encounter, 40 pairs of adjectives were created based on typical motives in road traffic, e.g. safety and efficiency. In an online survey, 123 participants then rated seven videos of drivers encountering a narrow passage with varying degrees of interaction. Based on factor analysis and descriptive statistics, ten items and 22 pairs of adjectives were selected for a final version. The final version will be tested in future studies to assess the questionnaire’s reliability.