Does Care Lead to Bonds? Exploring the Relationship Between Human Caregiving for Robots and Human-Robot Bonding

This study investigates how interaction scenarios of human caregiving for robots affect humans’ perceived bond with robots. In a between-subjects lab experiment (n = 88), participants played a game with a social robot during which they provided either 1) emotional care (comforting the robot); 2) instrumental care (helping with battery charging); or 3) no care for the robot. Results indicated that caregiving did not significantly affect human-robot bonding according to explicit relationship measures including closeness, social attraction, or desire for future interaction. However, caregiving mattered when bonding was measured implicitly. Those in the emotional caregiving scenario were more hesitant to replace the robot and invested more effort in a voluntary task requested by the robot than those who provided no care. These findings provide empirical evidence that emotional caregiving interactions can effectively foster initial human-robot bonding, highlighting a promising design scenario for human-robot interaction.