Trust in humanoid robots: implications for services marketing

By Michelle van Pinxteren, Ruud Wetzels, Jessica Rüger, M. Pluymaekers, Martin Wetzels. Journal of Services Marketing, 2019

393 citations recorded by the source corpus.

PurposeService robots can offer benefits to consumers (e.g. convenience, flexibility, availability, efficiency) and service providers (e.g. cost savings), but a lack of trust hinders consumer adoption. To enhance trust, firms add human-like features to robots; yet, anthropomorphism theory is ambiguous about their appropriate implementation. This study therefore aims to investigate what is more effective for fostering trust: appearance features that are more human-like or social functioning features that are more human-like.Design/methodology/approachIn an experimental field study, a humanoid service robot displayed gaze cues in the form of changing eye colour in one condition and static eye colour in the other. Thus, the robot was more human-like in its social functioning in one condition (displaying gaze cues, but not in the way that humans do) and more human-like in its appearance in the other (static eye colour, but no gaze cues). Self-reported data from 114 participants revealing their perceptions of trust, anthropomorphism, interaction comfort, enjoyment and intention to use were analysed using partial least squares path modelling.FindingsInteraction comfort moderates the effect of gaze cues on anthropomorphism, insofar as gaze cues increase anthropomorphism when comfort is low and decrease it when comfort is high. Anthropomorphism drives trust, intention to use and enjoyment.Research limitations/implicationsTo extend human–robot interaction literature, the findings provide novel theoretical understanding of anthropomorphism directed towards humanoid robots.Practical implicationsBy investigating which features influence trust, this study gives managers insights into reasons for selecting or optimizing humanoid robots for service interactions.Originality/valueThis study examines the difference between appearance and social functioning features as drivers of anthropomorphism and trust, which can benefit research on self-service technology adoption.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/048ec66e4c56f2eec640833bde73cba1d93d0f80

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Citations in the corpus

Alexa, she's not human but… Unveiling the drivers of consumers' trust in voice‐based artificial intelligence (2021, background): “Recent studies focusing on AI service robots identify trust as an important relational dimension, linked to service robots' acceptance (Wirtz et al., 2018), and argue that the level of anthropomorphism is an important driver of trust and intention to use them (van Pinxteren et al., 2019).”
Service robot implementation: a theoretical framework and research agenda (2019, background): “The service experience might be customized by consumers, according to their personal preferences or the type of contact (Van Doorn et al., 2017).”