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An empirical study on anthropomorphism and engagement with disembodied AIs and consumers' re‐use behavior
Author(s) -
Moriuchi Emi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
psychology and marketing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.035
H-Index - 116
eISSN - 1520-6793
pISSN - 0742-6046
DOI - 10.1002/mar.21407
Subject(s) - psychology , task (project management) , empirical research , norm (philosophy) , social psychology , philosophy , epistemology , management , political science , law , economics
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into the human race has gradually become a norm. AI entails technology assemblages such as machine learning, natural language processing, and reasoning. The influence of AI systems has intensified in consumers' daily lives. Many consumers have interacted with the notions of AI through advertisements or having personal experiences. Many consumers are curious about the use of AI. This paper reports three studies conducted to determine whether anthropomorphism (ANTH) and engagement play a role in consumers' intention to re‐use a voice assistant (VA; a machine‐learning AI). The second study will determine if ANTH and engagement play a role when consumers are using the VAs for different activities (task completion vs. information gathering). In addition, in Study 2, actual re‐use behavior was also tested in the model, which encouraged a stronger overall model fit. The results show that in general effort expectation (EE) has a strong positive impact on consumers' usage experience of the VA. However, between the two types of activities, EE has a stronger impact on consumers' usage experience for information‐gathering activities, whereas performance expectation has a stronger impact on usage experience when consumers use the VA for task‐completion purposes. The third study used internet usage experience as a moderating variable to determine the boundaries of the mediating effects in the study. The results show that the mediators yield results similar to prior studies.