Sharing Anxiety Is in the Driver’s Seat: Analyzing User Acceptance of Dynamic Ridepooling and Its Implications for Shared Autonomous Mobility

No.

Comment

Rebuttal

Reviewer 1

1.1

The article is well written and argued and merits publication.

Thank you!

1.2

focus group methodology, could be explained a bit based on literature

We have some more information on the choice of focus groups, defending the choice, and some information on hos focus groups are most often organized.

1.3

The small maps in the illustration don't really do anything for the analysis and you could consider removing them.

After some consideration, we removed the map entirely. The geographical location of each focus group is not really necessary for readers to understand the content of the research or the analysis.

1.4

the number of people who have participated in them should be stated (unless you mean that we should interpret that there were 4 in each).

We have added text to explicitly state the number of participants total, as well as in each focus group.

1.5

The formulation of "both focus groups" on line 653 should be reformulated since there were four and not two focus groups (perhaps both focus groups with potential and experienced users, or "both groups of users").

The text has been rewritten to refer to both categories of focus groups.

1.6

Typo line 294 "factorfactors".

Thank you - fixed!

1.7

You could describe how/if you dealt with the 29,2% disagreement in coding.

We have added information on how we dealt with the initial disagreement.

1.8

You should discuss your theoretical framework a bit more in the Analysis section. The role of the motivation theory by Hertzberg could be rasied earlier.

Hertzberg’s theory was not part of the initial literature review or analysis. Rather, it was a suggestion that helped us develop the graphical model’s structure used in the discussion, but the theory itself did not shape the analysis.

1.9

The role of "regions" as mentioned on line 777 could be explained earlier.   

The text has been changed to refer to regions earlier in the conclusion.

Reviewer 2

2.1

line 187: "Keoride" - no explanation of this term; it's a commercial solution, but it's only mentioned on line 196 (two pages later); 

We’ve altered the text to explicitly define Keoride as the on-demand ridehailing service commissioned by the Public Transport Authority at its first mention in the paper.

2.2

Fig.1: drawing source is missing; 

After some consideration with comments made by Reviewer 1, we decided to remove the map of New South Wales entirely, as its presence does not add anything relevant to the analysis.

2.3

Fig.2: The content of the drawing says nothing scientifically about the issues. It would be much better to replace it with another representing the results of the analysis; additionally, the font is too small and the description is illegible; there is no reference to this Fig. 2 in the text;

We consider that the results of the qualitative analysis are the themes, illustrated by the quotes. The model (fig 2 ff) is the authors’ interpretation of the interdependencies between the identified themes and an attempt to draw some more generalizable implications, useful for practitioner in the area.

We felt that our model of Willingness-to-Use and its transition into Willingness-to-Share-AVs was best explained stage-by-stage, instead of presenting the full model and trying to explain its parts in detail. To this end we broke the model down into three pieces and focused on each.

We have worked to improve the graphical quality of the model so that it is better suited for publication, with larger font size and higher file quality.

We also added a reference to the figure in the text.

2.4

Fig.3: The content of the drawing says very little scientifically about the issues. It would be much better to replace it with another representing the results of the analysis; additionally, the font is too small and the description is illegible; 

2.5

Fig.4: The content of the drawing completely replaces Fig. 1 and Fig. 2; the font is too small and the description is illegible; 

2.6

Section "5. Conclusion", lines 754-766: Rather, this part of the text is a summary. It is proposed to replace this text with specific proposals; 

The text has been modified to better communicate the main conclusions.

2.7

- Table 1: "Participation #": what do the values in this column represent? 

This table describes the coding nomenclature used for focus group participants, so that we can anonymize their involvement but also give some sociodemographic data that may inform the reader about their motivations when their quotes are listed. We have rewritten the table to make this nomenclature explicit, including with examples of its use before it appears in the text.

2.8

lines 256-260: is this content relevant in the context of methodology? Who are the authors and co-auhors? 

We have made this much more explicit in the text, and refer to author number (“first, second, third”) when discussing roles.

2.9

lines 279-282: how to interpret the given record? 

 "EXP-MP-M2: “I find that people’s biggest surprise is, they can’t believe it’s only the same price as a bus. People assume it’s going to be expensive, Uber priced at least. So I think that’s probably a big barrier to folks. There’s nothing that says where’s cheapest, that it’s cheaper than parking.”"

Is this a general conclusion or is it an answer of one of the respondents? 

This is an answer from one of the respondents. As now explained in the text the result of the qualitative analysis is typically presented by using illustrative quotes. The participants’ participation code is listed first: category of focus group, location of focus group, gender, and number.

2.10

lines 296-298: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282; 

- lines 301-304: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282; 

- lines 320-327: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282; 

- lines 331-334: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282;

- lines 346-349: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282;

- lines 353-356: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282;

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- lines 426-436: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282;

- lines 455-460: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282;

- lines 470-481: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282;

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- lines 566-579: the same question here as for the content on lines 279-282;

As above

2.11

line 307: "MOIA" - there is no explanation for this term;

Thank you for catching this! We have now made it explicit in the text that the video artefact used was from the ridesharing startup funded by Volkswagen, in order to give more background to the reader.

2.12

General - the following scientific ingredients are missing in the article:

- quantitative results are missing,

- there is no statistical analysis of the results,

Even though it is sometimes argued that qualitative data could be quantified by simply counting the codes associated with some aspect of the data content, such as the number of times a particular topic is mentioned or a specific sentiment is expressed towards a topic. This assumes though that the items are discrete items, which they are not when collected by means of focus groups. Qualitative research embraces flexible question-and-answer environments where the researcher is never quite sure what route the discussion will take. Hence, as this paper described a qualitative research study, qualitative data collection and qualitative analysis, no quantitative data is included, hence no statistical analysis has been possible.

2.13

There is no comparison with other findings

We refer to previous studies in our introduction and background to the subject; most research into people perceptions of autonomous vehicles to this point has been focused on technological acceptance, and less about sharing. In the Discussion we have stated that part of the results are indeed results that have been found also in other studies (as described in the introduction). We have also clearly pointed out the new contribution, i.e. sharing anxiety. This is a knowledge gap that this study has addressed.  

2.14

The description of the methodology is very general.

We have added some further information on the method used.