Social justice in the age of privately owned autonomous vehicles: A multi-level acceptance framework linking local and general acceptance to behavioral intention and opposition-oriented collective action in South Korea

JungJe Yoo

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2026, vol. 209, issue C

Abstract: The deployment of privately owned autonomous vehicles (AVs) raises not only technological and market questions but also concerns about social justice and transport policy. This study examines how perceptions of social justice—comprising distributive, procedural, and interactional dimensions—are associated with public responses to privately owned AVs through distinct acceptance pathways. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with cross-sectional survey data from 400 respondents in South Korea, the study tests a multi-level framework that distinguishes between local acceptance, referring to community-level evaluations of nearby deployment, and general acceptance, referring to broader societal evaluations of AV technology. The results show that social justice perceptions are positively associated with both local and general acceptance, with a stronger association observed for general acceptance. Local acceptance, in turn, shows a stronger positive association with behavioral intention than general acceptance. For opposition-oriented collective action, local acceptance is negatively associated with resistance-oriented mobilization, whereas general acceptance is not statistically significant in this sample. Given the cross-sectional, single-source design, these relationships are interpreted as associative and context-specific rather than causal. The findings suggest that fairness perceptions are relevant to broad societal legitimacy, whereas more proximal community-level evaluations are more closely aligned with intended use and collective resistance in an owner-centered early market. Overall, the study provides a bounded contribution to transport policy and technology governance research by demonstrating the multi-level nature of AV acceptance and its differentiated links to individual and collective behavioral outcomes.

Keywords: Autonomous vehicles; Social justice; Local acceptance; General acceptance; Behavioral intention; Collective action; Transport policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965856426001655
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:209:y:2026:i:c:s0965856426001655

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2026.105024

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose

More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().