Privacy concerns versus personalisation benefits in social robot acceptance by employees: A paradox theory — Contingency perspective

Acceptance of automation has been a challenge for over a century now. There are several success stories but there are also many failures. Studies exploring robots also go back many decades. Recent technological developments made science fiction movies a reality and we started seeing social robots emerging. This study explored acceptance of social robots by developing an argument that incorporates an individual-level, paradoxical nature of privacy and personalisation into the existing technology acceptance theory. The study accomplished its goals by focusing on employees working in care-providing organisations. The results indicated that both privacy concerns and service personalisation benefits independently and interdependently predict intention to use social robots at work. We also found that an employee's intention to use a social robot is highly dependent on her paradox mindset on both personalisation benefits and privacy concerns.