Enhancing hospitality experience with service robots: the mediating role of rapport building

This study investigated the influence of service robot attributes on customers’ hospitality experience from the perspective of relationship building. Through literature review and a preliminary study with in-depth interviews, a conceptual framework was developed. A scenario-based experiment and questionnaire survey were designed to test the model. The results indicate that robots’ being perceived as humanlike or intelligent positively affects customer-robot rapport building and the hospitality experience. Additionally, customer-employee rapport building was found to mediate the relationship between robot attributes and the hospitality experience, but customer-robot rapport building was not. Based on these findings, theoretical contributions and practical implications were discussed.