Are You Ready for Human-like AI Service Agents: Consumers’ Willingness to Use Substitute Versus Assist AI on OTA Platforms

With the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, human-like AI service agents have been increasingly applied in service marketing. Online travel agency (OTA) platforms provide an important application context for such service agents in consumer-facing service interactions, such as travel planning and related services. Drawing on social cognitive theory and control theory, this study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying consumers’ intentions to adopt AI service agents. One pretest and two experiments involving 521 participants were conducted to investigate the effects of the AI service agent role on consumers’ willingness to use substitute vs. assist AI. The results show that consumers are more willing to use assist AI service agents than substitute AI service agents. This effect is mediated by human identity threat and sense of control. Moreover, higher consumer technology readiness moderates these effects, mitigating the preference for assist over substitute AI service agents. This study extends the conceptual framework of AI service agents in human–computer interaction research and offers practical implications for the effective design and deployment of AI service agents in OTA applications.