Designing for Trust and Situational Awareness in Automated Vehicles: Effects of Information Type and Error Type

Trust and situational awareness (SA) are crucial to the adoption and safety of automated vehicles (AVs). Appropriate design of AV explanations could promote drivers’ acceptance, trust, and SA, enabling drivers to get more benefits from the technology. This study investigated the effects of error type and information type of AV explanations on drivers’ trust and SA. We recruited 300 participants for an online video study with a 3 (information type) × 2 (error type) mixed design. Linear mixed model analyses showed that compared with false alarms, misses were associated with more trust decrease after the error and more trust decrease after the post-error recovery. Compared with why information, how information was associated with lower SA generally and risked potential over-trust in false alarms. Therefore, we recommend deploying AV decision systems that are less miss-prone and including why information in AV explanations.