The dehumanization of service robots influences hospitality consumption emotion

Understanding whether and how encountering service robots influences hospitality consumption emotions helps identify the psychological effects and appropriate scenarios of robotic adoption. Anthropomorphic and human-like features are widely applied to strengthen the social impact of robots, but they are still considered non-human social agents. We argue that customers have dehumanized cognition of service robots, which induces fewer social constraints and greater perceived autonomy in hospitality service encounters. Five experimental studies were adopted to test the underlying mechanism through which service robots influence customers’ consumption emotions by increasing their perceived autonomy under various boundary conditions. Our results illustrate that, compared with human servants, customers experienced more positive consumption emotions with service robots. This effect is eliminated when interpersonal pressure from peer customers is perceived. This study concludes that the advantages of service robots are shaped by their dehumanized nature and enrich computers as social actors.