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

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...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Forgas Coll, Santiago, Huertas García, Rubén, Andriella, Antonio, Alenyà, Guillem
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/296080
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/296080
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Social-robot acceptance
Artificial intelligence
Front-office services
Gender
Robot personalities
Descripción
Sumario: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.