Autonomous vehicles: Willingness to pay and the social dilemma

•WTP in Japan for an auto-driving system is estimated insufficient in car markets.•A social dilemma will occur: people may not buy AVs that they consider moral.•Credibility regarding autonomous vehicles plays a key role in the social dilemma. Autonomous driving technologies are advancing rapidly, and determining when consumers ride in driverless vehicles on a daily basis is becoming essential. Using choice experiments, first, we elicit consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for autonomous driving systems in Japan along with their WTP for hybrid and electric engines. We found in this study that the Japanese consumers’ WTP is, on average, lower than the estimates for the US market and is not sufficient to enable autonomous vehicles (AVs) to capture a meaningful share of the existing car market. Second, compared with a previous study in the US, we propose and discuss an expected social dilemma caused by the ethical problems that AVs will face, known as the Trolley Problems. We find that social dilemma may occur because people tend not want to buy “moral” AVs. Third, we explored the determinants of the WTP and social dilemma to find that the credibility of AVs is determined to be a critical factor for the social dilemma.