When AI Fairness Shapes Creativity: The Mediating Role of Attitudes Toward AI Across Gender

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the modern workplace by offering unprecedented opportunities to enhance employee creativity and organizational innovation. In the context of digital transformation, organizations are striving to ensure sustainable performance; however, research remains limited on how perceived AI fairness and attitudes toward AI jointly influence creativity. Grounded in Social Exchange Theory and the Technology Acceptance Model, this study proposes a moderated mediation model to examine how perceived AI fairness shapes employees’ attitudes toward AI and, in turn, their creativity, with gender acting as a moderator of the relationship between fairness perceptions and attitudes toward AI. Data were collected from 214 highly skilled employees from diverse cultural backgrounds working in technologically advanced environments. Using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), the findings reveal a positive association between perceived AI fairness and creativity. Attitudes toward AI partially mediate this relationship; however, gender does not exert a significant moderating effect. The findings highlight the importance of AI fairness, reinforced by positive attitudes toward AI, in enhancing employee creativity. They also underscore the need for responsible and equitable AI practices and provide context-specific insights into the ethical challenges of AI in socio-technologically vulnerable environments. Finally, the findings point to a shift toward a more egalitarian and inclusive organizational landscape, in which gender differences become less salient in the context of digital transformation.