Humor type and service context shape AI service recovery

While artificial intelligence (AI) service failure is inevitable in tourism and hospitality, scholarly attention to it is limited. This study investigated how the type of humor (self-deprecating or self-enhancing) that AI agents adopt interacted with the service context (hedonic-dominant or utilitarian-dominant) in influencing customers' intentions to continue using AI devices. Findings indicate that in hedonic-dominant service contexts, self-deprecating and self-enhancing humor increase continuous usage intention; in utilitarian-dominant service contexts, only self-deprecating humor boosts continuous usage intention. Results also reveal the mediating roles of positive emotion and inferred negative motives along with the moderating effect of anthropomorphism. This study enriches theories on AI service recovery and offers tourism firms suggestions on how to use humor to resolve AI service failures.