Too guilty to be unethical: the impact of service robots’ empathy ability on unethical consumer behavior

Integrating empathy ability into service robots can be regarded as a potential resolution to enhance harmonious human-robot interaction experiences. However, it remains unclear whether and how service robots’ empathy ability impacts unethical consumer behavior (UCB). Therefore, according to social exchange theory, this research explores how service robots’ empathy ability impacts UCB and the underlying mechanism. Through four experiments, we discover that service robots’ empathy ability reduces UCB, with anticipatory guilt serving as the mediator. Moreover, the salience of anticipatory guilt weakens the impact of empathy ability on UCB. Additionally, consumers’ social desirability moderates the impact of service robots’ empathy ability on UCB through anticipatory guilt. These findings not only broaden our insight into UCB in human-robot interaction but also provide guidance for enterprises to develop more well-designed service robots to tackle UCB.