IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/prbchp/978-3-031-05728-1_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Humanizing Chatbots: The Effect of Fear from the COVID-19 Pandemic

In: Advances in Digital Marketing and eCommerce

Author

Listed:
  • Cong-Minh Dinh

    (National Chengchi University)

  • Sungjun Steven Park

    (National Chengchi University)

Abstract

Does fear of COVID-19 shape consumers’ tendency to anthropomorphize chatbots? To answer this question, this paper analyzed data from a survey of 377 US participants. Grounded in the three-factor theory of anthropomorphism, our results showed that fear of COVID-19 increases consumers’ tendency to imbue chatbots with human-like characteristics, which in turn leads to increased intention to use chatbot-powered mobile apps. In addition, our results also showed that consumers’ sensation-seeking (versus pragmatism-seeking) tendency toward using mobile apps moderated the indirect effect of fear on intention to use via perceived anthropomorphism. Our findings provide both theoretical and practical implications, especially with the recent call for utilizing chatbots in customer service due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Cong-Minh Dinh & Sungjun Steven Park, 2022. "Humanizing Chatbots: The Effect of Fear from the COVID-19 Pandemic," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, in: Francisco J. Martínez-López & Luis F. Martinez (ed.), Advances in Digital Marketing and eCommerce, pages 27-35, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-031-05728-1_4
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-05728-1_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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:spr:prbchp:978-3-031-05728-1_4. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.