ABSTRACT

Health organizations have relied heavily on social distancing to limit the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this research is to examine what factors can influence customers’ evaluations of social distancing as well as how and when these evaluations drive their usage of chatbot services. Using structural equation modeling to analyze the experimental data from 200 U.S. consumers, we found that when the service situation is utilitarian (hedonic) in nature, customers’ contamination fear influences their chatbot usage during service encounters through their social distancing attitudes (subjective norms) and then perceived usefulness of chatbots. Our findings provide meaningful theoretical contributions and practical implications.

摘要

卫生组织严重依赖社交距离来限制 COVID-19 大流行的传播。本研究的目的是检查哪些因素会影响客户对社交距离的评估，以及这些评估如何以及何时推动他们使用聊天机器人服务。使用结构方程模型分析来自 200 名美国消费者的实验数据，我们发现当服务情境本质上是功利性（享乐）时，客户的污染恐惧通过他们的社交疏远态度（主观规范）和然后感知聊天机器人的用处。我们的发现提供了有意义的理论贡献和实际意义。