Does a cute artificial intelligence assistant soften the blow? The impact of cuteness on customer tolerance of assistant service failure

被引：226
作者：
Lv, Xingyang [1 ]
Liu, Yue [2 ]
Luo, Jingjing [1 ]
Liu, Yuqing [3 ]
Li, Chunxiao [4 ]
机构：
[1] Southwestern Univ Finance & Econ, Sch Business Adm, Chengdu 611130, Peoples R China
[2] Southwestern Univ Finance & Econ, Sch Sports Sci & Phys Educ, Chengdu 611130, Peoples R China
[3] Tianjin Univ Commerce, Sch Management, Tianjin 300134, Peoples R China
[4] Nankai Univ, Coll Tourism & Serv Management, Tianjin 300350, Peoples R China
来源：
ANNALS OF TOURISM RESEARCH | 2021年 / 87卷
基金：
中国国家自然科学基金;
关键词：
Artificial intelligence assistant; Service failure; Experiments; Cuteness effect; Customer tolerance; Mediating mechanism; TIME PRESSURE; GROUP-PERFORMANCE; CONSUMERS; TENDERNESS; FORGIVENESS; RESPONSES; CHOICE; FUTURE; HELP;
D O I：
10.1016/j.annals.2020.103114
中图分类号：
F [经济];
学科分类号：
02 ;
摘要：
As artificial intelligent technologies have been increasingly applied in tourism and hospitality industry, the service failure caused by artificial intelligence assistant and how to recover them are worth empirical studying. Laboratory experiments were employed to test the impact of cuteness in service failure, with effective manipulation of cute appearance, cute voice and cute language style of artificial intelligence assistant. By utilizing three studies with seven experiments, this research demonstrated the positive effect of cuteness design of artificial intelligence assistant on customer tolerance of service failure and further revealed the two mediating paths (tenderness and performance expectancy) as well as the boundary (failure severity and time pressure) of the cuteness effect. These findings contribute to the knowledge on artificial intelligent assistant service and provide insight for cute design using in tourism and hospitality industry. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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页数：19
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