Cultural value configurations and guests’ evaluations of AI-enabled service technologies

As Artificial Intelligence reshapes hospitality service delivery, understanding how culturally diverse guests evaluate AI-enabled encounters is critical. This study examines how cultural value configurations shape evaluations of service robots in hotels. Cultural value configurations are coherent combinations of orientations that jointly influence how individuals interpret and assess service encounters. Using more than 3000 robot-related hotel reviews from guests across 77 countries, we integrate Hofstede’s dimensions with Schwartz’s value theory to explain cross-cultural differences in sentiment. Masculinity and uncertainty avoidance predict more negative sentiment, individualism shows a positive association that is sensitive to model specification, and power distance shows no direct effect. One configuration is robust: masculinity combined with uncertainty avoidance amplifies dissatisfaction, and this interaction holds under multilevel and combined estimation and survives correction for multiple testing. Two further configurations remain suggestive: power distance combined with uncertainty avoidance attenuates risk aversion, and individualism combined with masculinity increases tolerance for imperfection. Both are marginal and do not persist under multilevel or joint estimation, so we report them as patterns for replication rather than as established effects. Hofstede’s indices provide the measurement, while Schwartz’s value theory serves as an interpretive lens rather than as a measured individual-level construct. Findings position culture as a configurational system and provide guidance for AI service design and communication.