King's College London

The School for Government at King's College London has been awarded a grant from the Cabinet Office's Evaluation Accelerator Fund to research how the public can be better informed and engaged as automated vehicles (AVs) move towards commercial deployment in the UK.

The School for Government ​– in partnership with DG Cities, the innovation company owned by the London Borough of Greenwich, and the Department for Transport (DfT) – team will begin the research with a rapid evidence assessment of existing AV public engagement research. This will inform the design of behaviourally informed communication and engagement strategies, which will then be refined and tested through an adaptive, five-wave randomised controlled trial with a nationally representative UK sample. The aim is to identify approaches that help people understand AVs and make informed decisions about whether to use them. The findings will inform a public engagement playbook for local authorities, offering practical, evidence-based guidance for those preparing their communities for AV services.

This builds on our previous work with DG Cities which uses online survey experiments to understand how people in the UK may respond to negative information in the context of AVs and what factors drive citizens' willingness to use AVs.

Dr Sanchayan Banerjee, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the School for Government said:

"People may be open to automated taxis, but we know that they want safety, human backup, accountability, reasonable prices and safeguards around deployment — and negative incidents can undermine that willingness quite quickly. So it is important that we understand how to best inform citizens and communicate to them so they can engage with AVs safely, and I am very happy that we can lead this work here at SfG with support from EAF along with colleagues from DG Cities and DfT."