Role of trust in customer attitude and behaviour formation towards social service robots

This research proposes a model that identifies the antecedents of customers’ attitudes and behaviours towards the utilization of artificially intelligent (AI) social service robots in hospitality and tourism service delivery. The model highlights the importance of trust and its determinants on customers’ attitudes and behaviours towards social service robots. The proposed model and the hypotheses are tested utilizing data collected from the users of two distinctly different hospitality and tourism services. Data were analysed adopting a PLS-SEM approach. Results indicate that the level of acceptance of the use of social robots in service delivery is determined by a multistage process, in which trust perceptions play critical roles. Heuristic (i.e., hedonic motivation) and the individual (i.e., innovativeness) factors positively influence trust in social robots during service delivery. Findings, however, suggest significant differences in different service contexts: anthropomorphism has no effect on trust construct and effort expectancy does not influence positive emotion in hedonic service contexts while these relationships are significant in functional service contexts. Practical and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.