Exploring Women’s Perspectives on Learning and Trust in Automated Vehicles: A Socio-Ecological Lens

Paper Title

Exploring Women’s Perspectives on Learning and Trust in Automated Vehicles: A Socio-Ecological Lens

Publication Info

• Topic area: Women’s trust and learning dynamics in automated vehicle adoption.
• Keywords: Automated vehicles, trust, learning, feminist HCI, socio-ecological framework, safety, caregiving, gendered mobility, participatory design, inclusive technology.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Women report lower trust and familiarity with automated vehicles (AVs), often due to safety concerns, limited exposure, and AV designs that inadequately address their needs. Existing research focuses on technical reliability and individual attitudes, neglecting the socio-ecological and gendered dimensions of trust and learning.
• Significance: Understanding women’s perspectives on AVs is critical for designing inclusive mobility systems that address safety, caregiving responsibilities, and equitable adoption.
• Motivation and related work: Prior studies highlight a gender gap in AV trust and adoption, often attributing it to individual deficits rather than systemic issues. Feminist HCI research has begun addressing these gaps but lacks comprehensive socio-ecological analyses of trust and learning. This paper builds on these foundations to explore how women’s lived experiences shape their trust in AVs.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A feminist socio-ecological framework to analyze trust and learning dynamics in AV adoption, based on qualitative interviews with women.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduces a feminist socio-ecological account of trust–learning dynamics across individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy levels.
  2. Highlights the interplay between safety, caregiving roles, and gendered experiences in shaping AV trust and learning.
  3. Provides design and policy recommendations for inclusive onboarding, institutional accountability, and community-based co-learning.
  4. Reframes trust and learning as co-evolving phenomena rather than isolated variables.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted ten dyadic and five individual semi-structured interviews with 15 women in Brisbane, Australia.
  • Thematic analysis using Braun and Clarke’s six-phase approach, followed by mapping findings to the WISE-AV socio-ecological framework.
  • Explored trust and learning through feminist HCI principles, emphasizing relational, embodied, and situated knowledge.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Safety, comfort, and confidence are prerequisites for women’s trust and engagement with AVs.
  • Women prefer relational and experiential learning methods, such as guided demonstrations and hands-on trials, over manuals or abstract explanations.
  • Trust is shaped by caregiving responsibilities, gendered mobility roles, and systemic safety concerns.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Moves beyond individualistic and technical framings of trust to a socio-ecological perspective that integrates relational, institutional, and cultural dimensions.
  • Challenges male-default assumptions in AV design and governance, emphasizing inclusivity and participatory approaches.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Sample: 15 women (10 dyadic and 5 individual interviews) with diverse ages, occupations, and driving experiences.
  • Methods: Thematic analysis and socio-ecological mapping to uncover multi-level influences on trust and learning.
  • Metrics: Qualitative insights into safety concerns, learning preferences, and trust-building processes.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Small, context-specific sample limits generalizability.
  • Focused on hypothetical scenarios due to limited AV availability in participants’ context.
  • Future work should include longitudinal studies, cross-cultural comparisons, and participatory design interventions.

Summary

This study explores how women build trust and competence in automated vehicles (AVs) through a feminist socio-ecological lens. Findings reveal that women’s trust and learning are shaped by safety concerns, caregiving roles, and relational learning preferences. Trust and competence co-evolve across individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy levels, challenging male-default assumptions in AV design. The study provides actionable recommendations for inclusive onboarding, transparent governance, and participatory design. Future research should expand to longitudinal and cross-cultural studies to further validate and refine these insights.