The correlation of information and knowledge in regard to the acceptance level and their implication on self-driving cars in Germany

Driver assistance systems are on the rise and shall prospectively develop to autonomous (also called: self-driving or driverless) cars. Their broad acceptance has not been thoroughly scientifically researched until now. In a previous paper, information and knowledge has been hypothetically identified as a key influencing factor in the acceptance forming process (Geldmacher et. al., 2017). For this purpose, information and knowledge is equalized by major events and news over the past five years in the field of self-driving vehicles in this paper. Acceptance is equalized by positive evaluation and effect and operationalized by a subjective evaluation of above described events and respective reactions on the stock market. Given the premises that no other unknown variable further influences the level of acceptance through information and knowledge, above deployed hypothesis is proven.