Publication

The effects of gender and personality of robot assistants on customers’ acceptance of their service

Journal Article (2022)

Journal

Service Bussiness

Pages

359–389

Volume

16

Doc link

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-022-00492-x

File

Download the digital copy of the doc pdf document

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has stimulated the use of social robots in front-office services. However, some initial applications yielded disappointing results, as managers were unaware of the level of development of the robots’ artificial intelligence systems. This study proposes to adapt the Almere model to estimate the technological acceptance of service robots, which express their gender and personality, whilst assisting consumers. A 2 × 2 (two genders vs. two personalities) between-subjects experiment was conducted with 219 participants. Model estimation with Structural Equation Modelling confirmed seven out of eight hypotheses, and all four scenarios were estimated with Ordinary Least Squares, showing that robot gender and personality affected their technological acceptance.

Categories

robots, service robots, social aspects of automation.

Scientific reference

S. Forgas, R. Huertas, A. Andriella and G. Alenyà. The effects of gender and personality of robot assistants on customers’ acceptance of their service. Service Bussiness, 16: 359–389, 2022.