Understanding anthropomorphic voice-AI chatbot continuance from a human-AI interaction perspective

Although anthropomorphic AI technologies nowadays are significantly changing the human-AI interaction, the mechanism of how voice-AI chatbots’ anthropomorphism affects users’ continuance behaviour is unclear. To explore the role of human-AI interaction and privacy concerns in the continuance intention of anthropomorphic voice-AI chatbots, a research model, based on parasocial relationship theory, is developed. The research model was then empirically tested against a cross-sectional survey from 473 voice-AI chatbot users and two-wave longitudinal data collected from 271 voice-AI chatbot users. The Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) results indicate that voice-AI chatbots’ anthropomorphism affects continuance intention via both human-AI interaction fluency and human-AI rapport building. In particular, the impact of voice-AI chatbots’ anthropomorphism on voice-AI chatbots’ continuance intention is fully mediated by human-AI interaction fluency and human-AI rapport building. Moreover, the influence of human-AI interaction fluency on voice-AI chatbots’ continuance intention will decrease and the impact of human-AI rapport building on voice-AI chatbots’ continuance intention will increase when users’ privacy concerns are high. The findings provide new insights into AI chatbot research from a human-AI interaction perspective. Developers of voice AI chatbots could focus on anthropomorphism, interaction and user information collection strategies to increase user continuance intention.