Empathy in robots: the impact on responsibility attribution in service encounters

This study examines how empathic responses from service robots influence customers' attribution of responsibility in service encounters. Based on attribution theory and the idea that people favour entities perceived as similar to themselves, we hypothesised that robot empathy would affect responsibility attribution depending on service outcomes. A 2 (service outcome: success vs. failure) × 2 (robot empathy: present vs. absent) between-subjects experiment using a restaurant scenario revealed a significant interaction. When the robot was empathic, customers attributed more responsibility for success than failure, and significantly less responsibility to empathic robots than to non-empathic ones in failure conditions. For service managers, empathy increased responsibility attribution only in successful service. These findings suggest that empathic robots not only enhance perceived human-likeness but also influence responsibility attribution based on outcome valence. The study contributes to research on human-robot interaction and provides insight into designing service robots with socially interactive characteristics.