Gaze behaviour and electrodermal activity: Objective measures of drivers’ trust in automated vehicles

• Published in: Transportation research. Part F, Traffic psychology and behaviour Traffic psychology and behaviour, 2019-07, Vol.64, p.401-412
• Main Authors: Walker, F., Wang, J., Martens, M.H., Verwey, W.B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Automated driving; Automobile drivers; Drivers; Electric vehicles; Electrodermal Activity; Eye movement behaviour; Real time; Secondary task; Toll roads; Trust; Trust calibration; Trust in automation
• ISSN: 1369-8478; 1873-5517
• DOI: 10.1016/j.trf.2019.05.021

•Gaze behaviour and EDA are reliable continuous measures of trust in automation.•Gaze behaviour and EDA, when combined, predict trust better than individually.•Automated vehicle behaviour does not need to be perfect, but predictable.•Unexpected system failures strongly and negatively impact drivers’ trust. Studies show that drivers’ intention to use automated vehicles is strongly modulated by trust. It follows that their benefits are unlikely to be achieved if users do not trust them. To date, most studies of trust in automated vehicles have relied on self-reports. However, questionnaires cannot capture real-time changes in drivers’ trust, and are hard to use in applied settings. In previous work, we found evidence that gaze behaviour could provide an effective measure of trust. In this study we tested whether combining gaze behaviour with Electrodermal Activity could provide a stronger metric. The results indicated a strong relationship between self-reported trust, monitoring behaviour and Electrodermal Activity: The higher participants’ self-reported trust, the less they monitored the road, the more attention they paid to a non-driving related secondary task, and the lower their Electrodermal Activity. We also found evidence that combined measures of gaze behaviour and Electrodermal Activity predict self-reported trust better than either of these measures on its own. These findings suggest that such combined measures have the potential to provide a reliable and objective real-time indicator of driver trust.