IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05492651.html

AI-enabled social support chatbot usage: flowing ambivalence and liminalities

Author

Listed:
  • Hajer Kefi

    (DVHE - De Vinci Higher Education)

  • Insaf Khelladi

    (DVHE - De Vinci Higher Education)

  • Zied Mani

    (UPN - Université Paris Nanterre, CEROS - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur les Organisations et la Stratégie - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre)

  • Nathalie Veg-Sala

    (CEROS - Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur les Organisations et la Stratégie - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre)

Abstract

Interest in social and emotional support chatbots has recently surged, making human – chatbot relationships increasingly common. However, users' subjective experiences with these chatbots often extend beyond simple interactions, reflecting the complex dynamics of liminality and ambivalence. Through a netnographic study of the chatbot Replika, we explore how users experience relational liminality, and control and agency liminality. These dynamics contribute to what we term flowing ambivalence, where users feel both comforted and unsettled, fostering dependency on chatbots despite an awareness of their artificial empathy. Our findings suggest that emotional support chatbots provoke complex emotional states that fluctuate and adapt, underscoring the need for nuanced frameworks to understand how users relate to AI tools.

Suggested Citation

  • Hajer Kefi & Insaf Khelladi & Zied Mani & Nathalie Veg-Sala, 2024. "AI-enabled social support chatbot usage: flowing ambivalence and liminalities," Post-Print hal-05492651, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05492651
    DOI: 10.1080/12460125.2024.2443226
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05492651v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-05492651v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/12460125.2024.2443226?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Moon, Youngme, 2000. "Intimate Exchanges: Using Computers to Elicit Self-Disclosure from Consumers," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 26(4), pages 323-339, March.
    2. Otnes, Cele & Lowrey, Tina M & Shrum, L J, 1997. "Toward an Understanding of Consumer Ambivalence," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 24(1), pages 80-93, June.
    3. Yew-Kwang Ng, 2004. "The Magnitude of Welfare Change: Consumer Surplus," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Welfare Economics, chapter 4, pages 65-91, Palgrave Macmillan.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sara Moussawi & Marios Koufaris & Raquel Benbunan-Fich, 2021. "How perceptions of intelligence and anthropomorphism affect adoption of personal intelligent agents," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 31(2), pages 343-364, June.
    2. Yi Sun & Shihui Li & Lingling Yu, 2022. "The dark sides of AI personal assistant: effects of service failure on user continuance intention," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 32(1), pages 17-39, March.
    3. Park, Gain & Park, YounJung & Lee, Seyoung, 2024. "Compliance-gaining in metaverse: A moderated parallel mediation model testing the interaction between legitimization of paltry favors technique and victim identification," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    4. Karin Brondino-Pompeo, 2021. "Mapping spheres of exchange: a multidimensional approach to commoditization and singularization," AMS Review, Springer;Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 11(1), pages 81-95, June.
    5. Noor Hasmini Binti Abd Ghani & Mohammad Kashedul Wahab Tuhin, 2016. "Consumer Brand Relationships," International Review of Management and Marketing, Econjournals, vol. 6(4), pages 950-957.
    6. Zeng, Fue & Ye, Qing & Li, Jing & Yang, Zhilin, 2021. "Does self-disclosure matter? A dynamic two-stage perspective for the personalization-privacy paradox," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 667-675.
    7. René van Bavel & Nuria Rodríguez-Priego, 2016. "Nudging Online Security Behaviour with Warning Messages: Results from an Online Experiment," JRC Research Reports JRC103223, Joint Research Centre.
    8. Idris Adjerid & Alessandro Acquisti & George Loewenstein, 2019. "Choice Architecture, Framing, and Cascaded Privacy Choices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 2267-2290, May.
    9. Kim, Inhwa & Ki, Chung-Wha & Lee, Hyunhwan & Kim, Youn-Kyung, 2024. "Virtual influencer marketing: Evaluating the influence of virtual influencers’ form realism and behavioral realism on consumer ambivalence and marketing performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    10. Jones, Michael A. & Taylor, Valerie A., 2018. "Marketer requests for positive post-purchase satisfaction evaluations: Consumer depth interview findings," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 218-226.
    11. Mariani, Marcello M. & Hashemi, Novin & Wirtz, Jochen, 2023. "Artificial intelligence empowered conversational agents: A systematic literature review and research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    12. Mengjun Li & Ayoung Suh, 2022. "Anthropomorphism in AI-enabled technology: A literature review," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 32(4), pages 2245-2275, December.
    13. Sumeet Gupta & Haejung Yun & Heng Xu & Hee-Woong Kim, 2017. "An exploratory study on mobile banking adoption in Indian metropolitan and urban areas: a scenario-based experiment," Information Technology for Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 127-152, January.
    14. Ulrich Gnewuch & Stefan Morana & Marc T. P. Adam & Alexander Maedche, 2022. "Opposing Effects of Response Time in Human–Chatbot Interaction," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 64(6), pages 773-791, December.
    15. Tonya Williams Bradford & John F. Sherry, 2024. "How marketers and consumers synchronize temporal modes to cocreate ritual vitality," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 554-575, March.
    16. Thuy Duong Oesterreich & Eduard Anton & Julian Schuir & Alexander Brehm & Frank Teuteberg, 2023. "How can I help you? Design principles for task-oriented speech dialog systems in customer service," Information Systems and e-Business Management, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 37-79, March.
    17. Choi, Yung Kyun & Yoon, Sukki & Lacey, Heather P., 2013. "Online game characters' influence on brand trust: Self-disclosure, group membership, and product type," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 996-1003.
    18. Christine Rzepka & Benedikt Berger & Thomas Hess, 2022. "Voice Assistant vs. Chatbot – Examining the Fit Between Conversational Agents’ Interaction Modalities and Information Search Tasks," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 839-856, June.
    19. Laura Litre Valentin, 2020. "Business Events as Mirrors, Models and Laboratories of Social Imaginaries: The Paradox of Suffering in Ritualized Contexts," Post-Print hal-04308956, HAL.
    20. Hu, Guimei & Xie, Tao & Wang, Haizhong & Liu, Wumei, 2026. "Should the doctor smile at me? The impact and mechanism of the service avatar's smile display and realism on the customer's self-disclosure in healthcare consultation services," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:hal:journl:hal-05492651. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.