Understanding Cultural Preferences for Social Robots

Abstract

This article presents a study of cultural differences affecting the acceptance and design preferences of social robots. Based on a survey with 794 participants from Germany and the three Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, we discuss how culture influences the preferences for certain attributes. We look at social roles, abilities and appearance, emotional awareness and interactivity of social robots, as well as the attitude toward automation. Preferences were found to differ not only across cultures, but also within countries with similar cultural backgrounds. Our findings also show a nuanced picture of the impact of previously identified culturally variable factors, such as attitudes toward traditions and innovations. While the participants’ perspectives toward traditions and innovations varied, these factors did not fully account for the cultural variations in their perceptions of social robots. In conclusion, we believe that more real-life practices emerging from the situated use of robots should be investigated. Besides focusing on the impact of broader cultural values such as those associated with religion and traditions, future studies should examine how users interact, or avoid interaction, with robots within specific contexts of use.

Robots in education

“…In our results, the gender identity of the stakeholders did not affect their views on robots in education. These results are in line with Korn et al (2021) who found similar results. Also, de Jong et al (2021) and Spence et al (2018) found that gender did not significantly predict attitudes toward social robots.…”

“…People with a low or medium income were more likely to belong to the attitude profile of Sceptic stakeholders, compared to stakeholders with a high income. Earlier research on the acceptance of social robots found that preferences were independent of participants' level of income (Korn et al, 2021). However, in the study of Korn et al (2021), most participants were students of similar ages and levels of income.…”

“…Earlier research on the acceptance of social robots found that preferences were independent of participants' level of income (Korn et al, 2021). However, in the study of Korn et al (2021), most participants were students of similar ages and levels of income. Our quantitative study presented in Chapter 4 was more diverse, with participants with more distributed income levels.…”

User Experience in Social Robots

“…We observed a slight increase of the number of studies published during the second period of time (2014,2017] compared to the first period. For many years, robots have been tools used primarily in factories [72]. Nowadays, robots have become embedded in everyday people's life and co-operate in both the industrial and service sectors.…”

Spiritual Therapeutic Robot for Elderly With Early Alzheimer’s Disease: A Design Guide Based on Gender

“…There has been therapeutic robot research done in the past to facilitate the elderly with AD, such as assistive robots for AD and related Dementia patients (6), and healthcare robots for older people at home (7). Several have highlighted that affective and social characteristic are important human attributes for machine behaviour (8), and have emphasized the aspect of human emotion or affect in robot interaction (9)(10)(11)(12). Thus, the research argues that assistive robots must prioritize this important element of human emotion in their design, so that effective strategies to positively influence the elderly emotions could be devised.…”