Emotion and service quality of anthropomorphic robots

Deployment of robots has become prevalent in the service sector. The advanced digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI), and the current COVID-19 pandemic have accelerated the wide application of service robots to provide quality customer experience with limited in-person service encounters. Many of today's service robots perform not only complex services, but they are anthropomorphic with physical and psychological states like humans. This study investigates how the varying degree of anthropomorphism in robots affect customers’ perceived service quality. A research model with associated hypotheses was developed based on affect-as-information theory. The study collected data from 455 randomly selected customers who were served by either a mechanical robot (automatic on-demand coffee maker) or an anthropomorphic robot (travel information assistant). The results of the study showed that anthropomorphism has a significant positive impact on intimacy between robots and humans, intimacy has significant positive impact on customers’ perceived service quality, and intimacy has a mediating role on the relationship between anthropomorphism and service quality.