Effect of Humor on User Interest in a Recommendation Chatbot

This study investigated the effects from including humor stimuli in an interaction with a recommendation chatbot on user interest in a recommended item. Three types of chatbots were developed with different frequencies of humor stimuli. A psychological experiment was conducted to investigate the differences in user interest in the recommended item. As a result, no significant direct effect on user interest was observed depending on the frequency of the humor stimuli. Nevertheless, the sense of humor, trust, and humanity had effects on the user interest. Moreover, the results suggested that humor stimuli had a positive effect on sense of humor and negative effect on trust.