Workers' subjective well-being in human-robot interaction: Evidence from China labor-force dynamics survey

As the new wave of the technological revolution accelerates, the widespread industrial robot adoption is profoundly reshaping the labor market. While existing research has predominantly focused on objective socioeconomic indicators such as employment, income, and workplace safety, the systematic impact on workers' subjective well-being (WSWB) remains largely underexplored. By integrating global robotics data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), micro-level firm data from China's Second National Economic Census, and micro-individual data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), this paper explores the impact and mechanisms of industrial robot adoption on WSWB in the industrial sectors of cities at or above the prefecture level in China. The research results indicate that industrial robot adoption has a significant positive effect on improving WSWB. The mechanism analysis reveals heterogeneous effects across skill levels. For high-skilled workers, robots deliver multi-dimensional benefits, including higher wages and welfare income, reduced physical labor intensity, enhanced skill development, and an improved work-life balance. For low-skilled workers, while robot-driven productivity improvements facilitate wage growth, particularly for lower-income groups, their improvements in welfare benefits, skill diversification, and health-related outcomes remain relatively limited. Moreover, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the impact of industrial robot adoption on WSWB exhibits substantial significant differences across individual, sectoral, and regional dimensions. The findings provide empirically grounded support and actionable pathways to optimize labor market structures, narrow inter-group well-being gaps, and boost national well-being as industrial robots proliferate.