IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v364y2025ics0277953624009997.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How do older adults react to social robots’ offspring-like voices

Author

Listed:
  • Zhou, Cheng
  • Dong, Wanqing

Abstract

Social robots are being developed as a technological solution to alleviate older adults' loneliness due to separation from their offspring. This study explores how and why offspring-like voices affect older adults' acceptance of social robots from an auditory perspective, which differ from the visual aspects of human–robot interactions. Three scenario-based studies are conducted among a large number of cognitively intact older adults. Our findings reveal a positive correlation between the offspring-like voices of social robots and older adults’ acceptance of the robots. Further, social identity served as a psychological mechanism mediating the effect of offspring-like voices on the acceptance of older adults, whereas spatial distance acted as a positive moderator of these direct and indirect effects. Notably, older adults were more willing to accept social robots with grandchildren-like voices. These insights offer theoretical contributions to the literature on social identity theory and the similarity attraction paradigm, as well as practical implications for social robot design and development, thereby contributing to the evolving landscape of human–robot interaction acceptance.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhou, Cheng & Dong, Wanqing, 2025. "How do older adults react to social robots’ offspring-like voices," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 364(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:364:y:2025:i:c:s0277953624009997
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117545
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624009997
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117545?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:364:y:2025:i:c:s0277953624009997. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.