Assessing public acceptance of urban air mobility: Behavioral insights

Urban air mobility (UAM) integrates autonomy, electrification, and sharing technologies into air travel with the prospect of connected multimodal transportation systems. Despite technological advances, public acceptance is identified in the literature to be a potential barrier to the widespread UAM deployment in the early stages and its sustainable long-run growth. Here, we investigate whether and what population cohorts embrace UAM as a travel mode to get to an airport by collecting a stated preferences sample dataset in Chicago. A hybrid choice model is then estimated, which accounts for latent or taste heterogeneity in the UAM acceptance behavior, to identify heterogeneous cohorts of UAM (non)users by their (un)observable characteristics and traits. The results provide behavioral and strategic insights that can inform stakeholders and policy makers. Notably, the propensity for UAM is found to be promoted by utilitarian and hedonic beliefs, hindered by acrophobia, and unassociated with safety and security concerns, environmental concerns, and perception of transportation-related benefits. The statistical insignificance of complementary ground access to UAM vertiports can inform strategic infrastructure investment decisions on locating vertiports, specifically by discouraging investments in establishing vertiports in Chicago North Side and downtown. By estimating the model in the willingness-to-pay space, the value of time (hours/$) for UAM, ridehail, rail, and car are directly measured at 72.736, 42.929, 16.268, and 12.357, respectively.