Artificial Intelligence Service Agents: Role of Parasocial Relationship

Abstract

Increased use of artificial intelligence service agents (AISA) has been associated with improvements in AISA service performance. Whilst there is consensus that unique forms of attachment develop between users and AISA that manifest as parasocial relationships (PSRs), the literature is less clear about the AISA service attributes and how they influence PSR and the users' subjective well-being. Based on a dataset collected from 408 virtual assistant users from the US, this research develops and tests a model that can explain how AISA-enabled service influences subjective well-being through the mediating effect of PSR. Findings also indicate significant gender and AISA experience differences in the PSR effect on subjective well-being. This study advances current understanding of AISA in service encounters by investigating the mediating role of PSR in AISA's effect on users' subjective well-being. We also discuss managerial implications for practitioners who are increasingly using AISA for delivering customer service.

Do Men Have No Need for “Feminist” Artificial Intelligence? Agentic and Gendered Voice Assistants in the Light of Basic Psychological Needs

“…Furthermore, some empirical work on parasocial relationships with media figures, for example with characters from science fiction movies ( Hall, 2019 ), also suggests a positive influence of gender identification with screen characters on the perceived social connection with them. Parasocial relationships refer to the emotional attachment that people develop towards a media personality or fictional character ( Horton and Richard Wohl, 1956 ) and have recently become a subject of research also in the context of human interactions with AI characters ( Noor et al, 2021 ). We encourage further research with larger sample sizes to examine under which conditions Relatedness is a function of gender-matched human-machine interactions, including in more social application domains of AI than banking.…”

A Mind in Intelligent Personal Assistants: An Empirical Study of Mind-Based Anthropomorphism, Fulfilled Motivations, and Exploratory Usage of Intelligent Personal Assistants

“…For example, lonely people anthropomorphize their pets to obtain the social connection they need (Epley et al, 2007). Similarly, anthropomorphism of IPAs can satisfy users' sociality motivation as well (Cao et al, 2019;Chen and Park, 2021;Li and Sung, 2021;Noor et al, 2021), which is manifested by social connection with IPAs in the current study. Social connection refers to users' feeling of closeness with the IPAs (Lee et al, 2001) and has been validated by previous studies to strengthen usage behaviors (Tseng et al, 2018).…”

Developing a service quality scale for artificial intelligence service agents

“…Accordingly, these software applications were used as suitable representative technology types for the construction of our AISAQUAL scale. An inspection of the measure items of the six dimensions of AISAQUAL suggests that the item measures might also be applicable to other AISA types including social robots (Noor et al , 2021a). We recommend that the AISAQUAL be adapted and tested for these other AISA types, which have more physical features than chatbots and virtual assistants, as they become available in the market.…”

“…Following Wirtz et al (2018), we define AISA as “system-based autonomous and adaptable interfaces that interact, communicate and deliver service to an organization’s customers” (p. 909). Examples of AISA include customer service chatbots, virtual assistants, social robots and autonomous cars (Noor et al , 2021a).…”