Public acceptance of civilian drones and air taxis in Germany: A comprehensive overview

Abstract

The technology of unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e., civilian drones) continues to improve and concepts of operations are being developed. Against this background, the importance of public acceptance has grown and the number of studies on the subject has increased in recent years. In this context and as a follow-up to the study by Eißfeldt and colleagues (Eißfeldt et al. in CEAS Aeronaut. J. 11:665–676, 2020), a representative telephone survey on the acceptance of civilian drones in Germany was conducted at the end of 2022. In addition to re-evaluating the attitude towards civilian drones in general, the current study particularly examined the use case of air taxis. It was found that the attitude towards civilian drones tended to be slightly more positive than in the first study. For air taxis, attitudes were revealed to be relatively balanced, with a slight negative tendency. Moreover, extensive inferential statistical analyses showed several factors such as active experience with drones, general sensitivity to noise, and interest in environmental protection to be significantly associated with the attitudes towards civilian drones and air taxis. The application of three different prediction models revealed that a person’s attitude towards civilian drones could be predicted with up to 71% accuracy by drone-related concerns. In this context, concerns about the violation of privacy and animal welfare had the highest predictive value. In sum, the current study provides a comprehensive overview on the acceptance of civilian drones and air taxis in Germany. Its findings underline that citizens’ opinions and concerns must be considered when designing future air mobility concepts.