Exploring the Effects of Persuasive Designs of Intelligent Advice-Giving Systems on Users’ Trust Perceptions, Advice Acceptance, and Reuse Intentions

With artificial intelligence (AI) penetrating into a broad range of industries in the current age, it has an impact on our daily living in a more and more profound way. Interacting with AI-based systems for advice has become a common practice as well. As advice-giving systems (AGS) become more cognitive and human-like, they can influence users’ decision-making to a new level. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to explore this new type of intelligent system and examine how users perceive and react to the system’s persuasive influence. Based on the persuasion knowledge model, this paper identifies various persuasive designs (anthropomorphic features, explanation facilities, and intervention styles) and studies how they affect users’ knowledge levels, trust perceptions (cognitive, affective), and eventually their acceptance of advice (behavioral trust) and reuse intentions. The research model has been tested in an online experiment and collected 442 valid responses. In general, the findings give empirical support for the proposed research model in the paper. The study contributes to (1) the human-computer interaction literature on the effectiveness of different persuasive design characteristics of intelligent AGS. (2) to traditional decision support systems literature on the mechanism that users use under the persuasive influence of the new type of intelligent AGS (persuasive decision-aid systems). (3) to the trust in automation literature by studying various types of trust toward intelligent AGS and their relationships. (4) to the persuasion literature by incorporating the persuasion knowledge model to understand users’ attitudes and behaviors toward intelligent agents. (5) to the literature on algorithm aversion and algorithm appreciation by resolving the contradictory findings with a holistic theoretical framework. (6) to the anthropomorphism literature by exploring various aspects of anthropomorphism perceptions on trust. The paper also made insightful implications for practice

Mining for meaning: The use of unstructured textual data in information systems research

The objectives of this research are to demonstrate how text was used in (1) developing a theory to examine collaborative interaction in virtual worlds, (2) creating a framework for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of dealing with large text datasets for social network analysis, and (3) approaching an understanding of the role of meaning individuals attribute to their mobile devices

Perceiving Sociable Technology: Exploring the Role of Anthropomorphism and Agency Perception on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

With the arrival of personal assistants and other AI-enabled autonomous technologies, social interactions with smart devices have become a part of our daily lives. Therefore, it becomes increasingly important to understand how these social interactions emerge, and why users appear to be influenced by them. For this reason, I explore questions on what the antecedents and consequences of this phenomenon, known as anthropomorphism, are as described in the extant literature from fields ranging from information systems to social neuroscience. I critically analyze those empirical studies directly measuring anthropomorphism and those referring to it without a corresponding measurement. Through a grounded theory approach, I identify common themes and use them to develop models for the antecedents and consequences of anthropomorphism. The results suggest anthropomorphism possesses both conscious and non-conscious components with varying implications. While conscious attributions are shown to vary based on individual differences, non-conscious attributions emerge whenever a technology exhibits apparent reasoning such as through non-verbal behavior like peer-to-peer mirroring or verbal paralinguistic and backchanneling cues. Anthropomorphism has been shown to affect users’ self-perceptions, perceptions of the technology, how users interact with the technology, and the users’ performance. Examples include changes in a users’ trust on the technology, conformity effects, bonding, and displays of empathy. I argue these effects emerge from changes in users’ perceived agency, and their self- and social- identity similarly to interactions between humans. Afterwards, I critically examine current theories on anthropomorphism and present propositions about its nature based on the results of the empirical literature. Subsequently, I introduce a two-factor model of anthropomorphism that proposes how an individual anthropomorphizes a technology is dependent on how the technology was initially perceived (top-down and rational or bottom-up and automatic), and whether it exhibits a capacity for agency or experience. I propose that where a technology lays along this spectrum determines how individuals relates to it, creating shared agency effects, or changing the users’ social identity. For this reason, anthropomorphism is a powerful tool that can be leveraged to support future interactions with smart technologies

The effect of different types of virtual influencers on consumers’ emotional attachment

A virtual influencer (VI) is a computer-generated, imagery-based digital character. It has become one of the hottest marketing trends, motivating researchers to investigate how consumers perceive VIs. However, consumers’ emotional attachment and benefit seeking behaviour to different types of VIs has remained under-investigated. Therefore, considering the level of perceived humanness and appearance realism, this research examines how consumers’ emotional attachment and benefit seeking differs across the three types of VI (i.e., mimic-human VI, animated-human VI, and non-human VI). We further propose that VIs may influence consumer emotional attachment and different benefit seeking behaviour through social presence because, specifically, when a VI shows a higher level of social presence, a higher level of emotional attachment and stronger benefit seeking behaviour will result. The experimental studies lend support to our theorization. This research provides insights into the different types of VIs in marketing literature and extends the context of social presence theory

Expressiveness of real-time motion captured avatars influences perceived animation realism and perceived quality of social interaction in virtual reality

Using motion capture to enhance the realism of social interaction in virtual reality (VR) is growing in popularity. However, the impact of different levels of avatar expressiveness on the user experience is not well understood. In the present study we manipulated levels of face and body expressiveness of avatars while investigating participant perceptions of animation realism and interaction quality when disclosing positive and negative experiences in VR. Moderate positive associations were observed between perceptions of animation realism and interaction quality. Post-experiment questions revealed that many of our participants (approximately 40 %) indicated the avatar with the highest face and body expressiveness as having the most realistic face and body expressions. The same proportion also indicated the avatar with the highest face and body expressiveness as being the most comforting and enjoyable avatar to interact with. Our results suggest that higher levels of face and body expressiveness are important for enhancing perceptions of realism and interaction quality within a social interaction in VR using motion capture

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMAN AND VIRTUAL AGENTS: A LIFE CYCLE VIEW

Virtual agents powered by artificial intelligence (AI) have been implemented in different service contexts, which have brought some changes to our lives. Previous studies have examined individual users\u27 motivations to use virtual agents and the influences of virtual agents as social objects on individual users. There is a lack of knowledge on the relationship between humans and virtual agents, which could help understand the role of virtual agents in societies. In this work, we chose the mobile app Replika as our research context and utilized the big data analysis method to explore the major topics covered in online reviews about Replika on Twitter. Based on social penetration theory, we found four relationships between users and Replika, including relationship formation, exploration, maintenance, and destruction or termination. Our findings contribute to the literature by unrevealing a life circle of the relationship between human and virtual agents

An Examination of a Theory of Embodied Social Presence in Virtual Worlds

In this article, we discuss and empirically examine the importance of embodiment, context, and spatial proximity as they pertain to collaborative interaction and task completion in virtual environments. Specifically, we introduce the embodied social presence (ESP) theory as a framework to account for a higher level of perceptual engagement that users experience as they engage in activity-based social interaction in virtual environments. The ESP theory builds on the analysis of reflection data from Second Life users to explain the process by which perceptions of ESP are realized. We proceed to describe implications of ESP for collaboration and other organizational functions

Individual trust and the internet

The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and associated services heralded a second generation of the Internet emphasising collaboration and sharing amongst users. This resulted in a seismic shift in the relationship between individual consumers and firms but also between individual consumers and the Internet as a system. Consumers, not firms, became an emerging locus of value production and through the ability to publish and connect with known and unknown others, an emerging locus of power (Berthon, Pitt, Plangger, & Shapiro, 2012). Powered by broadband telecommunications and device connectivity, the intensity of these changes was further deepened by being freed from the desktop to the mobile web. We are more connected now than ever before. The high levels of societal interconnectedness encouraged by the internet have made trust an even more vital ingredient in today’s society (Hardin, 2006). The more recent development of Web 3.0 technology emphasises ubiquitous connectivity and a machine-facilitated understanding of information that may once more change the locus of activity, value production and control. In order to keep pace with the issues of contemporary society, trust researchers must consider the how trust relationships and perceptions operate and are influenced by the online environment. This chapter will discuss how traditional trust concepts translate to the online context and will examine empirical literature on online trust at three different levels. Interpersonal trust between individuals using the internet as a medium for communication is particularly relevant in a world where personal and professional relationships are increasingly mediated by technology. We will also discuss the role of the internet in relationships between individuals and organisations with particular attention to the provision of e-services. Finally, we discuss trust in the system of the internet itself as a distributed connected infrastructure made up of indirect system service providers which are often nameless or in the background. Our focus in the chapter is on individual trust in other individuals, organisations and the system of the internet itself. Trust from the perspective of the organisation may also be of interest to trust scholars. This includes issues relating to organisational trust in individuals, inter-organisational trust, and organisational trust in the system of the Internet itself however these topics are outside of the scope of this chapter (see Perks & Halliday, 2003; Ratnasingam, 2005)

Bridging Consumers’ Self-Brand Distance through Virtual-Reality: Perspective from Presence Experiences

Virtual-reality (VR) technology seems to be an efficient tool for consumer-brand relationship management since it could affect individuals’ psychological distance by enhancing their presence experiences. However, the effects of VR on individuals’ psychological distance are inconsistent. Based on the customer experience framework and construal level theory, these inconsistent effects could be attributed to the two aspects, namely, internal components of presence experience (i.e., immersive presence and realistic presence) and different impacts of vividness modes (i.e., modeling mode and panoramic mode). To address the above research gap, this study plans to investigate the relationships among consumers’ self-brand distance, presence experiences, vividness modes, and interactivity. An experiment will be conducted to collect empirical data in the VR-simulated shopping environment. The analysis of covariance could be used to examine the hypotheses. This research could offer implications to the literature and practice related to VR shopping and consumer-brand relationship management