Social class, public self-awareness, and consumers’ heterogeneous attitude to AI machine anthropomorphism

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has led to the gradual transformation of interpersonal interactions into human-AI interactions, and the differences between these two types of interactions have attracted widespread attention. Still, scholars have not yet agreed on consumers` responses to AI machine anthropomorphism. This paper explores the relationship between AI machine anthropomorphism and consumers’ usage intention based on the privacy computing theory and finds a U-shaped relationship between AI machine anthropomorphism and consumers’ usage intention, which is mediated by privacy concerns and public self-awareness and positively moderates the relationship. Consumers’ social class also influences their attitudes toward AI machine anthropomorphism, i.e., consumers from high social class show a high degree of AI machine anthropomorphism while those from low social class show favour for a low degree of AI machine anthropomorphism. This article enhances existing research by examining consumer characteristics through a granular lens.