Segmenting the public's risk beliefs about drone delivery: A belief system approach

Risk beliefs inherently impinge on the rapid proliferation of drone delivery, which provides a promising solution to the last-mile problem. Communication campaigns that seek to inspire the public's uptake of the innovative technology are challenging because the risk beliefs vary across different segments in a larger population. While previous segmentation efforts rely on theoretically distal causes of behavior such as demographics and personality traits, the study was the first to explore audience subgroups based on implications of the structural interconnections of risk beliefs in a cognitive system. Using the data from a national survey, this study conducted a latent class analysis and identified four distinct profiles of U.S. urban residents’ (N = 474) risk beliefs about drone delivery. Drawing from research on belief formation and change, the study further found that attitudes toward drone delivery, perceived innovativeness of an organization due to drone adoptions, and expectancy predicted the audience profiles, but perceived behavioral control did not. The findings highlight the insights from a belief-system approach to audience segmentation and provide an empirical basis for targeting groups of the audience with the right communication strategies to inspire adoption of the innovative technology.