The responsibility to inform: How AI companies’ transparent communication practice influences public readiness in a cross-national context

Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) companies face increasing societal scrutiny as their technologies diffuse rapidly, creating both benefits and risks. A central challenge lies in public readiness – the preparedness of the public to understand, evaluate, and engage with AI products amid profound information asymmetry between companies and users. This study examines how organizations’ transparent communication practice, as a form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), can foster public readiness to engage with AI products. It conceptualizes transparent communication practice not simply as disclosure but as an ethical responsibility. Drawing on Rawlins’ (2008) three-dimensional framework, the study investigates how perceived substantial information, participation, and accountability mediate the relationship between organizations’ transparent communication practice and public readiness to engage with AI products. A between-subjects experiment was conducted with participants in the U.S. ( N = 270) and China ( N = 275), testing public responses to high- vs. low-transparency communication from AI companies. Results show that perceived substantial information and accountability significantly mediated the positive effects of transparent communication practice on readiness in both countries, whereas perceived participation did not. In the U.S., the public’s ascription of responsibility to businesses moderated these effects: high-transparency communication had stronger initial impacts among those with low responsibility ascription, but perceptions of substantial information translated more strongly into readiness among those with high responsibility ascription. No moderating effects emerged in China, suggesting that distinct socio-political contexts shape public responses to transparent communication. The findings advance research on organizations’ transparent communication practice as a form of CSR and highlight the contextual nature of public openness to AI products.