Can cuteness soften my anxiety? The impact of conversational styles of service robots on consumer service acceptance

Purpose As artificial intelligence technology empowers service robots, they increasingly communicate with consumers in a human-like manner. This study aims to investigate the effect of service robots’ different conversational styles (competent conversational style vs. cute conversational style) on consumer service acceptance and demonstrate the moderating role of consumers’ technology anxiety. Design/methodology/approach Based on anthropomorphism theory and social presence theory, the authors conducted two scenario-based experiments (restaurant scenario and hotel scenario) to investigate this issue. Findings The results indicate that service robots’ conversational styles impact consumers’ willingness to accept the use of service robots through perceived social presence and positive emotion. Moreover, consumers perceived social presence and positive emotion play a serial mechanism. In addition, the effect of competent conversational style on consumers perceived social presence is less effective than that of cute conversational style. Finally, the authors demonstrate the moderating role of consumer technology anxiety in the relationship between conversational styles and perceived social presence. Practical implications To provide consumers with a positive human–robot interaction experience at the service front line, managers need to make better use of the conversational styles of service robots by comprehensively considering the characteristics of consumer technology anxiety. Originality/value This research extends the literature on service robots by integrating consumer characteristics and robots’ conversational styles. These findings highlight the effectiveness of cute conversational style in alleviating consumer technology anxiety.