Automated social presence in AI: Avoiding consumer psychological tensions to improve service value
研究发现，AI的自动化社交存在感（即感觉与另一个存在共处）能缓解消费者在AI体验中的心理紧张，提升功能与社会价值感知及未来使用意愿，尤其对高社交需求者效果更显著。
Consumers are increasingly embracing robots and AI. This has led them to suffer psychological tensions in their AI experiences (e.g., data capture, classification, delegation and social experiences). This exploratory research proposes that AI with higher perceived automated presence (sense of being with another being) alleviates psychological tensions. This in turn leads to consumer perceptions of higher functional and social value and higher future use intention. A study into service robots (n = 331) supported the proposal that consumers’ perceptions of greater automated social presence in service robots makes them feel understood rather than misunderstood, empowered rather than replaced and connected rather than alienated, which increases their functional and social value perceptions and intention to use robots in the future. The impact of automated social presence on social experience is higher for consumers with a higher need for social interaction. This research lends weight to some theoretical proposals made in previous literature that were, at that point, empirically unexplored.