Understanding the acceptance of emotional artificial intelligence in Japanese healthcare system: A cross-sectional survey of clinic visitors’ attitude

Japan has one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world. However, under the impact of a rapidly aging population, the system suffers from shortages of labor due to an increase of senior patients. The Japanese government has actively embraced the development of society 5.0, in which artificial intelligence (AI) integration in the healthcare system is considered to be a viable solution for the demographical change. In such a context, this paper seeks to examine the perspectives of clinic visitors, who are both stakeholders and beneficiaries of the AI-integrated healthcare system. We hypothesized the predicting variables for patients’ perceptions of EAI in healthcare and perform multiple linear regression modeling. The results show that in general, senior patients and male patients perceive the EAI technology with more negativity. As for behavioral variables, attitude toward EAI-based applications has positive correlations with patients’ level of familiarity (β=0.346***;0.297***) and negative correlations with concerns about losing control to AI (β=-0.262**; -0.188*), in both private and public healthcare settings. Meanwhile, concerns about privacy violation and discrimination are non-significant predictors, which contradict the emerging literature on this subject. As such, we contextualize these findings with insights afforded by an understanding of Japanese culture as well as the Technological Acceptance Model (Davis, 1989). Finally, policy and education implications to promote its EAI acceptance to general senior members of society are recommended.