2020 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication Aug 31 – Sept 4, 2020 Virtual Conference

Understanding robot acceptance/ rejection: the SAR Model

Mele C., Russo Spena T., Tregua M., Laddaga C., Ranieri A., Ruggiero A, Gargiulo R. Introduction

Artificial Intelligence and robots are moving very rapidly into everyday life (Forbes, 2019). Robots offer opportunities for service automation, productivity and effectiveness (Wirtz et al., 2018; MIT 2018)

- Dystopian future about their effect on Acceptance or employee and society (Forbes, 2018) Resistance?

- Some recent failures or difficulties (e.g., Jibo, Kuri, Keckeer, Pepper) Literature on Social and Service Robots

CLASSIFICATION ü Industrial, professional service, and personal service robots (Murphy et al., 2017); ü Embodied (with virtual body or face) or disembodied (only voice-based); ü Functional tool-like, zoomorphic animal-like, caricatured cartoon-like, anthropomorphic (Fong et al., 2003; Jörling, et al., 2019); ü Robot as a service (RAAS) (Tung et al., 2017).

FUNCTIONALITIES ü Devices capable of autonomous decision-making (Pagallo, 2013) ü Physical presence, non-verbal capabilities and gestures (Mimoun and Poncin, 2015) ü Ability to adapt and interact with users (Čaić et al., 2018; Wirtz et al., 2018) ü Make customers feel they are with another social entity (van Doorn et al., 2017) Agents & Robots in Service Research: The sRAM mployees: frontline service roles (van Doorn et al., 2017; Wirtz et al., 2018) utonomous decision-making entities: service with potential positive performance on customer’s value and experience (Čaić et al., 2018; Huang and Rust, 2018, De Keyser et al., 2019) ocial entities: some threats to value creation in service settings can be envisaged (Bolton, 2017; Wirts et al., 2018, Čaić et al., 2018) Wirtz et al. (2018). Brave new world: service robots in the frontline. Journal of Service Management, 29(5), 907-931. Research Aim

Research has been called for to investigate the match between robots and value proposition (e.g., Čaić et al., 2018).

What do users feel about Robots in a specific service context?

v How are Service robot and AI technologies performing in terms of user experience and value creation? Research process

RESEARCH DESIGN: INFORMANTS ADDITIONAL DETAILS DATA SOURCE ü The sRAM model by Wirtz et al. (2018) as a starting framework; DEVELOPERS Founders, ICT ü Qualitative method due to the novelty of the topic & Directors, CEO (Bryman and Bell, 2011); DISTRIBUTORS ü Analysis of 15 robots: a number enough high to represent most of the industry (e.g. Aibo, Buddy, Healthcare Jibo, Nao, Paro, Pepper, Sanbot Elf) specialists, IT managers, hotel SERVICE DATA COLLECTION: directors, digital ü Three-levels interviews: developers, service PROVIDERS experience providers, end-users; manager, IT project ü Short surveys to replace/complement the interviews; manager, dealer ü Online reviews to combine the evidence with end- 191 selected online users’ reactions END-USERS reviews out of 265, and 10 interviews DATA ANALYSIS: ü Analysis software: Atlas.ti, coding and co-occurrence table SARM Service Agent and Robot Acceptance/Rejection Model Social-Emotional Elements Perceived Perceived Perceived Social Social Humanness Functional Elements Interactivity Presence Perceived + - Ease of Use User + ACCEPTANCE of Service Robots

Perceived + VALUE Usefulness - IN-CONTEXT User REJECTION of Service Robots - Subjective Social Norms + -

Trust Rapport Relational Elements Functional elements

“Paro is a brilliant design. Even though the appearance USABILITY may be that of a child's toy, the fact that it can be used • User’s subjective likelihood that robots can improve to help adults in this way is wonderful.” actions “Jibo was charming when I first got it, but I was • Users mainly questioned the robot’s ability to surprised about the limitations. All I get from it is that efficiently operate I couldn’t do what I thought to do . • The mismatch is between effectively completing tasks and the consequences of using different systems “Initially our staff was very skeptical about the real usefulness of Sanbot, indeed they feared that it EASE OF USE would increase the workload, instead they were • Users prefer usefulness over ease pleasantly surprised by the support given by the of use and experience can robot in entertaining guests and giving information.” counteract unease of use

SOCIAL NORMS “I refuse to use self-service tills and would never enter a • Users state to perceive value based store with a robot replacing the sale assistant. Humans on what others can get/lose from a need jobs. This kind of ‘progress’ is not doing us any robot good.” • There were afraid that robots may “Considering the fact that people nowadays do not get to eventually substitute or undermine spend much time with others, it is quite natural for us to human interaction have certain reservations about robots « Socio-emotional elements

SOCIAL INTERACTIVITY • As users become increasingly engaged with robots, they also expected the robot to do “Sanbot is different. My guests react to it differently. I the same think it’s because it socially and emotionally engages • Users do not assign explicit intentionality to with them. It’s definitely a new kind of technology that robots and do not feel them as substitutes in is a step closer to a what we can call a robotic interaction human interactions

“We realized that what is best is a combination of speech SOCIAL PRESENCE and screen interface. When the screen shows off the • Appearance and interactions help information, the robot can tell you ‘Here you are’ or ‘Click here’. People know what to do, so it provides a full users in learning how to use and interaction with customers, with both speech and visual makes interactions enjoyable interactions.” HUMANNESS “It is interesting to see our customers give the robots individual • Robots used in the full-service names and almost treat them as fellow employees” provision are seen as a human entity. “The robot I interacted with to ask some suggestions about a city • To the robots’ used for specific tasks I was visiting could only answered basic questions: I know the robot cannot interact the way an employee or human usually do, or stages of service provision not but I was pretty excited about this experience” explicit intentionality are attributed Relational elements

TRUST “In our hotel, receptionists accepted robots when they • saw that they could take care of guests, letting service Employees are trustful about robots to give basic information and entertaining guests robot if repetitive and boring tasks while waiting for the check in/out.” are performed easily “Babies up to 5 years old are intimidated by Pepper who • Users develop trust if they is 1.21 cm tall, while they are attracted to Elf Sanbot personally meet and experience who is 90 cm tall. Conversely older kids who perceive Sanbots as toys and are interested in Pepper.” positive interaction with agents and robots

RAPPORT • Repeated successful/failed responses together with feelings “Older patients tend to lose interest very quickly when the affect both credibility and interest robot is not properly and quickly reacting to their inquiries “ “When we are in the development stage, we know how crucial it is to adequately react to the questions [asked] by users; we observed a relevant give up rate in case of a wrong reaction “ Value-in-context

“For the price I was very disappointed. Not nearly as smart as PRICE & USEFULNESS Alexia and even Siri. The only cool thing is face recognizing. • Expectations from use and comparisons Definitely not worth the money. Awesome idea, poor AI.” with alternates solutions are driven by “Pepper is very expensive and fragile. Since the guarantee has price expired and in case of breakage it must be sent to Japan, we use it very little, only for special events. In the hospital wards we use other cheaper and more efficient robots” SOCIAL IMPACT & PERFORMANCE • Evaluations of outcome are depending on the social impact in a specified context “I bought this dog to recover myself from the death of my pug. It’s pretty cool. Except running speed. And believe me for buying and raising a dog you will need triple the amount of this mechanical dog’s price” RELATIONS & PERFORMANCE • Perform properly according to the expectations and the ability to customize “We invested 900.000 € when launching 15 Pepper robots according to the context onboard. The return is extremely not significant, since the software is not advanced and performances are poor. We use them as toys for our younger guests.” Discussion

- Consider customers experience value in the context where robots are used: multiple users and usages affect the outcome - Depict functional, social-emotional, and relational elements as leading even to rejection - Describe the elements as having contrastive effects on acceptance/rejection - Propose context congruence as conceptualizing what users want in a given circumstance and in a context of use - Identify customization and contextualization of robots to overcome their limited ability of interacting with humans. Implications & Further research v Functional, social-emotional, and relational elements are mutual influencing and lead to perceived value-in-context. Their interplay should be further investigated. (Čaić, M. et Al., 2018; Wirtz, J. et. Al., 2018) v Design is not enough: users are looking for an emotional and relational experience and need to live an interaction. (Van Doorn, J. et Al., 2017) v It is important to empirical test users’ reactions to service robots. (Ray, C. et Al., 2008) v Developers, providers, and end-users should cooperate to better set robots features. (Kunz, W. et Al., 2017) Thank you for your attention!

Questions and suggestions are welcome