Anticipating acceptance of emerging technologies using twitter: the case of self-driving cars

Christopher Kohl (), Marlene Knigge (), Galina Baader (), Markus Böhm () and Helmut Krcmar ()
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Christopher Kohl: Technical University of Munich
Marlene Knigge: Technical University of Munich
Galina Baader: Technical University of Munich
Markus Böhm: Technical University of Munich

Journal of Business Economics, 2018, vol. 88, issue 5, No 4, 617-642

Abstract: Abstract In an early stage of developing emerging technologies, there is often great uncertainty regarding their future success. Companies can reduce this uncertainty by listening to the voice of customers as the customer eventually decides to accept an emerging technology or not. We show that risk and benefit perceptions are central determinants of acceptance of emerging technologies. We present an analysis of risk and benefit perception of self-driving cars from March 2015 until October 2016. In this period, we analyzed 1,963,905 tweets using supervised machine learning for text classification. Furthermore, we developed two new metrics, risk rate (RR) and benefit rate (BR), which allow analyzing risk and benefit perceptions on social media quantitatively. With our results, we provide impetus for further research on acceptance of self-driving cars and a methodological contribution to acceptance of emerging technologies research. Furthermore, we identify crucial issues in the public perception of self-driving cars and provide guidance for the management of emerging technologies to increase the likelihood of their acceptance.

Keywords: Acceptance; Benefit perception; Risk perception; Self-driving cars; Text mining; Voice of customer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C38 M30 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11573-018-0897-5

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