A Research on the Influence Mechanism of Anthropomorphic Service Robots on Consumer Usage Intention: The Moderating Effect of Social Class

Zhang Yi; Wang Yonggui

doi:doi:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20210818.102

Summary

The anthropomorphism of robots plays an important role in building consumer trust and increasing customer-firm closeness. Thus, with the fast development of artificial intelligence technology, more and more firms have introduced anthropomorphic service robots. However, anthropomorphic robots may lead to negative emotions in consumers, such as uneasy, unnerved, even creeped out. Despite the existing studies have focused on the impact of anthropomorphic appearance of robots on consumers’ attitudes and behaviors, scholars have not yet reached a consensus on how different anthropomorphic appearance of robots affects consumers’ willingness to use them. In addition, its influence mechanism and boundary conditions are not clear yet, which need to be further explored.

Therefore, based on the theory of Uncanny Valley and from the perspective of social class, this paper develops a mediated moderating model, examines how the anthropomorphic appearance of service robots affects consumer usage intention, and demonstrates the varying impacts of service robot anthropomorphism on consumer behaviors among different social classes. Through three experiments, we find that the degree of anthropomorphism of service robot appearance has an inverted U-shaped effect on consumer usage intention. Moreover, the social class of consumers moderates the relationship between the level of anthropomorphism and usage intention, and this moderating effect can be explained by the perceived intelligence of service robots. Specifically, consumers from the lower social class perceive higher intelligence for service robots with a lower degree of anthropomorphism, which increases their usage intention; in contrast, consumers from higher social class perceive higher intelligence for service robots with a higher degree of anthropomorphism, which also increases their usage intention. This study includes three different service situations of shopping malls, hotels and restaurants, and excludes the confounding effect of robot gender, consumer aesthetic perception and novelty perception, which has high internal validity and external validity.

This paper provides several theoretical contributions and managerial implications. First of all, by discussing how the anthropomorphic appearance of service robots affects consumer usage intention for the first time, it enriches the research on anthropomorphism and causes enterprises to pay more attention to the anthropomorphic appearance of service robots. Secondly, it explains the driving role of perceived intelligence in the impact of anthropomorphic appearance on consumers’ willingness to use comprehensively, and reconciles the contradictions of existing studies. Thirdly, by adding social class into the research framework, it reveals the differences in the intention of consumers of varying social classes to use humanized service robots, which fills some gaps in the boundary conditions of the Uncanny Valley effect. At the same time, this study provides effective guidance for firms on how to better understand the psychological perception of consumers, and how to reduce the negative effect of service robot application and enhance the positive effect of service robot application in the process of service delivery.