Impact of media dependence: how emotional interactions between users and chat robots affect human socialization?

In the era of intelligent media, human users and chatbots have established a deep dependency relationship through communication, making media dependence a behavioral foundation that widely permeates human social practice. This article investigates how media dependence affects human social interaction during emotional interactions between human users and chatbots. Based on the theory of media dependence, the existing mature scales of media dependence and interpersonal communication were adapted, and 496 Replika user questionnaires were collected. After screening the validity of the questionnaires, 428 valid questionnaires were obtained. Descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis, and mediation effect testing were used to analyze the impact of media dependence on human–computer emotional interaction. Results indicate a significant positive correlation between human–chatbot emotional interaction and human user social interaction. Media dependence significantly positively regulates emotional interactions between humans and chatbots. In addition, the social interactions of human users are partially influenced by factors such as user nature, age, education, and income.