Research On The Customers’ Intention Of Value Co-creation With Service Robots From The Perspective Of Social Cognition And Interpersonal Attraction

With the rapid development of technology,especially artificial intelligence and robotics manufacturing,more and more service robots are manufactured and used in the service industry,leading many hotels and restaurants companies to adopt service robots to integrate service processes,improve service efficiency and maintain competitive advantage.In traditional service,customers can establish relationships through interpersonal communication with frontline employees to obtain warm and quality service.The role of service robots in the warm reception service needs further investigation.Therefore,hotel managers should pay attention to the impact of service robots on warm and quality service and subsequent customer engagement behavior.Also,the attraction of service robot is also an important reason for its design and implementation.However,there are few empirical studies on customer interaction experiences.Thus,how to improve the intention of customers to interact with service robots to make the most of technological advances to promote hotels is the main content of this article.Extant literature has examined the adoption or acceptance aspects of service robots as well as consumer perceptions and behavior towards service robots.However,the impact of service robots as a social entity on the customer experience has been overlooked.Thus,from the perceptive of value co-creation,we consider service robots as a resource integrator connecting hotels and customers to investigated the impact of hotel service robots on the customers’ intention of value co-creation by combining several theories such as social cognitive theory,stimulus-organism-response framework and interpersonal attraction theory.We build a suitable experimental model and obtain data in the form of questionnaires.The aim of this paper is to explore the factors that may influence customers’ co-creation intention with service robots.First,according to the tool attribute of artificial intelligence,this study integrates social cognitive theory and the stimulus-organism-response framework to develop a theoretical model which exams the influence of the service robot attributes on customers’ co-creation intention.Based on valid 398 questionnaires,this study follows structural equation modelling analysis and qualitative comparative analysis(QCA)to test the proposed model.The results indicate that:(1)autonomy perception has a positive and significant influence on customers’ co-creation intention,while there is no direct significant effect between social presence perception and customers’ co-creation intention;(2)warmth perception and competence perception mediate the effect of social presence perception and autonomy perception on customers’ co-creation intention;(3)social class of customers positively moderate the relationship between autonomy perception and warmth perception and competence perception,while there is no significant moderating effect for social presence perception;(4)6 different combinations of 5 antecedents lead to a high level of customer value co creation intention.The results of this study contribute to our knowledge of about the role of service robot in the process of value co-creation,and provide guidance for the practice and development of robots in the service domain.Second,according to the human-robot interaction partnership and the theory of interpersonal attraction,this study constructed a model of value co-creation intention.We collect 424 valid questionnaire samples in our research and used structural equation modelling analysis and QCA to analyze and verify the sample data.The results show that:(1)warmth perception and competence perception positively influence the social attraction,task attraction and physical attraction of the service robot;(2)social attraction,task attraction and physical attraction all positively influence customers’ cocreation intention,among which task attraction and social attraction play a mediating effect;(3)social attraction has a stronger influence on customers’ co-creation intention for males,while task attraction is more salient in stimulating customers’ co-creation intention for females;(4)5 different combinations of 6 antecedents lead to a high level of customer value co creation intention.The results of this study provide practical guidance for hotel managers and consumers.The study has some theoretical contributions and innovations.First,this study examines the influence of service robot attributes on customer’s value co-creation from perspective of social cognition theory,which extend the theoretical study of service robots.Second,this study explores the impact of the service robot’s interpersonal attraction and customer gender on customer’s value co-creation.Third,this study explores the factors that influence customer co-creation with service robots in the hotel context from the consumer’s perspective.