Towards Acceptance of Virtual Validation: The Indirect Technology Acceptance Framework

The development of autonomous and respective multi-agent systems creates both technological innovations and significant societal and regulatory challenges. Of particular note is the social acceptance of these systems once they are integrated into their usage environment. This is a critical factor that is typically limited to the end product, while the development process and the underlying technologies remain largely disregarded. However, there are indirect technologies like virtual testing, which are increasingly used in the respective product development, for which their potential effects on the acceptance among stakeholders are overlooked. To address this source of indirect skepticism, this paper introduces the Indirect Technology Acceptance Framework (iTAF) to investigate the practical applicability and acceptance dimensions using the example of virtual validation methods. The framework reveals specific implications for each framework layer: the technolog- ical layer requires procedural transparency; the institutional layer necessitates harmonized standards across jurisdictions; the societal layer highlights the influence of communication strategies and safety demonstrations; and the interactive layer emphasizes continuous stakeholder engagement throughout the development process. The model successfully integrates tech- nical, regulatory, and societal dimensions, acknowledging the unique position of indirect users as critical stakeholders in societal legitimation and integration. It also offers a foundation to align development processes and especially system validation to the stakeholders’ needs regarding the trustworthiness of the system of interest (SOI). To illustrate the iTAF, it is applied as a demonstrative example to the social acceptance of virtual validation in the presence of legal uncertainty.