Customer perception and acceptance of autonomous delivery vehicles in the State of Kuwait during COVID-19

COVID-19 is one of the most important dilemmas that took place during the last few years. Logisticians worked hard to present a new mechanism called Autonomous Delivery Vehicles (ADVs) by which they afford help making life easier for people during pandemic while trying to reduce pollution on road as well. This work mainly aimed to explore Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) and the convenience of users - according to gender - to the idea of using Autonomous Delivery Vehicles (ADVs). A survey-based method was applied and presented. It was distributed online where a total of 450 participants had taken part to express their ideas. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data and the results were discussed thoroughly. The model was conducted according to nine hypotheses. Results showed that all of them were supported except hypothesis 7, which is the trust in technology that negatively influenced the perceived risk leading to rejecting the hypothesis that supposes the validity of H7. It was concluded that the perceived risk and behavioral intention relationship were only significant for males while the perceived risk and trust in technology relationship were only significant for females.