Unveiling the Impact of AI Technological Anxiety on the Marketers' Intention to Adopt Generative AI

With the rapid development of Generative AI technology, businesses need their marketers to adopt it to assist in completing their job tasks. However, marketers are not entirely optimistic and may feel anxious and concerned about it. This research explores how AI anxiety affects marketers' AI-generated content intention. Based on social cognitive theory, this study empirically examines the impact of anxiety on marketers' intention to use AI-generated content, including the mediating role of AI trust and the moderating effect of AI self-efficacy. Using survey data from 495 marketers, we found that AI privacy, bias, and opacity anxiety negatively correlate with AI trust and weaken marketers' intention to use AI-generated content. Furthermore, this relationship is moderated by AI self-efficacy, where the negative relationship is significantly mitigated when marketers possess AI self-efficacy. These findings enrich the research on Generative AI in marketing and help organizations focus on marketers' anxious resistance to adopting Generative AI and reduce the adverse effects of AI anxiety.