服务机器人拟人化对消费者使用意愿的影响机理研究——社会阶层的调节作用

《外国经济与管理》 2022年44卷第3期 页码：3 - 18  online：2022年3月15日

服务机器人拟人化对消费者使用意愿的影响机理研究——社会阶层的调节作用

A Research on the Influence Mechanism of Anthropomorphic Service Robots on Consumer Usage Intention: The Moderating Effect of Social Class

作者（中）：张仪, 王永贵

作者（英）：Zhang Yi, Wang Yonggui

作者单位：1.首都经济贸易大学 工商管理学院，北京 100070

摘要：机器人拟人化在提高消费者信任感和亲密度等方面发挥着重要的作用。因此，随着人工智能技术的逐步成熟，越来越多的企业引进了拟人化服务机器人。本文探讨了服务机器人外观拟人化与消费者使用意愿之间的关系，并剖析了外观拟人化程度对于不同社会阶层消费者的差异性影响。本文通过3个实验，首次提出了服务机器人外形拟人化程度对于消费者使用意愿的倒U形影响以及感知智能在其中的驱动作用，验证了消费者所处的社会阶层对其感知智能和使用意愿的影响。具体而言，低社会阶层的消费者对外观拟人化程度较低的服务机器人的感知智能水平较高，其使用意愿也较高；而高社会阶层的消费者对外观拟人化程度较高的服务机器人的感知智能水平较高，其使用意愿也较高。本研究为企业在提供智能服务的过程中如何更好地了解消费者的心理感知、减少服务机器人应用的负面效应和扩大服务机器人应用的正面效应提供了有效的指导。

关键词：服务机器人; 拟人化; 使用意愿; 感知智能; 社会阶层

Summary: The anthropomorphism of robots plays an important role in building consumer trust and increasing customer-firm closeness. Thus, with the fast development of artificial intelligence technology, more and more firms have introduced anthropomorphic service robots. However, anthropomorphic robots may lead to negative emotions in consumers, such as uneasy, unnerved, even creeped out. Despite the existing studies have focused on the impact of anthropomorphic appearance of robots on consumers’ attitudes and behaviors, scholars have not yet reached a consensus on how different anthropomorphic appearance of robots affects consumers’ willingness to use them. In addition, its influence mechanism and boundary conditions are not clear yet, which need to be further explored.Therefore, based on the theory of Uncanny Valley and from the perspective of social class, this paper develops a mediated moderating model, examines how the anthropomorphic appearance of service robots affects consumer usage intention, and demonstrates the varying impacts of service robot anthropomorphism on consumer behaviors among different social classes. Through three experiments, we find that the degree of anthropomorphism of service robot appearance has an inverted U-shaped effect on consumer usage intention. Moreover, the social class of consumers moderates the relationship between the level of anthropomorphism and usage intention, and this moderating effect can be explained by the perceived intelligence of service robots. Specifically, consumers from the lower social class perceive higher intelligence for service robots with a lower degree of anthropomorphism, which increases their usage intention; in contrast, consumers from higher social class perceive higher intelligence for service robots with a higher degree of anthropomorphism, which also increases their usage intention. This study includes three different service situations of shopping malls, hotels and restaurants, and excludes the confounding effect of robot gender, consumer aesthetic perception and novelty perception, which has high internal validity and external validity.This paper provides several theoretical contributions and managerial implications. First of all, by discussing how the anthropomorphic appearance of service robots affects consumer usage intention for the first time, it enriches the research on anthropomorphism and causes enterprises to pay more attention to the anthropomorphic appearance of service robots. Secondly, it explains the driving role of perceived intelligence in the impact of anthropomorphic appearance on consumers’ willingness to use comprehensively, and reconciles the contradictions of existing studies. Thirdly, by adding social class into the research framework, it reveals the differences in the intention of consumers of varying social classes to use humanized service robots, which fills some gaps in the boundary conditions of the Uncanny Valley effect. At the same time, this study provides effective guidance for firms on how to better understand the psychological perception of consumers, and how to reduce the negative effect of service robot application and enhance the positive effect of service robot application in the process of service delivery.

Key words: service robots; anthropomorphism; usage intention; perceived intelligence; social class

DOI：10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20210818.102

收稿日期：2020-3-25

基金项目：国家自然科学基金项目（72032004）；国家科技部专项课题（2020IM020300）

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