Empirical study on consumer’s acceptance of delivery robots in France

The growth of e-commerce has led to an increase in delivery options, and various innovations, such as autonomous delivery robots (ADRs) are being developed to meet the important challenges of the last mile. Currently, in the testing state, consumer acceptance remains relatively unknown. This study aims to identify the factors that affect the level of consumer acceptance of autonomous robotic delivery in urban areas using consumers’ current knowledge of this technology. To answer this question, the factors that negatively or positively influence user acceptance are first determined, and then the validity of the relationships between the factors and user acceptance are tested empirically. The results show that participants of this study are neutral to ADRs, which is reasonable for newly developed technology. Utilitarian factors, such as performance expectancy, are the most important for potential users, followed by social influence, trust in technology, and innovativeness. Price sensibility, perceived risk, and hedonic motivation do not seem to affect the acceptance of ADRs at the current stage of development, whereas effort expectancy shows an atypical negative effect on the behavioural intention to use this technology. However, this study has several limitations that need to be considered, notably the small sample size, which does not allow the generalisation of the results to the French population.