Service robots and COVID-19: exploring perceptions of prevention efficacy at hotels in generation Z

Purpose: COVID-19 is expected to enhance hospitality robotization because frontline robots facilitate social distancing, lowering contagion risk. Investing in frontline robots emerges as a solution to recover customer trust and encourage demand. However, we ignore how customers perceive these initiatives and, therefore, their efficacy. Focusing on robot employment at hotels and on Generation Z customers, this study aims to analyze guests’ perceptions about robots’ COVID-19 prevention efficacy and their impact on booking intentions. Design/methodology/approach: This study tests its hypotheses combining an experimental design methodology with partial least squares. Survey data from 711 Generation Z individuals in Spain were collected in 2 periods of time. Findings: Generation Z customers consider that robots reduce contagion risk at hotels. Robot anthropomorphism increases perceived COVID-19 prevention efficacy, regardless of the context where the robots are used. Robots’ COVID-19 prevention efficacy provokes better attitudes and higher booking intentions. Research limitations/implications: The sampling method used in this research impedes this study’s results generalization. Further research could replicate this study using random sampling methods to ensure representativeness, even for other generational cohorts. Practical implications: Employing robots as a COVID-19 prevention measure can enhance demand, especially if robots are human-like. Hoteliers need to communicate that robots can reduce contagion risk, particularly in markets more affected by COVID-19. Robots must be employed in low social presence contexts. Governments could encourage robotization by financially supporting hotels and publicly acknowledging its benefits regarding COVID-19 prevention. Originality/value: This study combines preventive health, robotics and hospitality literature to study robot implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on Generation Z guests – potential facilitators of robot diffusionCarolan Research Forum – ORT 2020; Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, project PID2020-113561RB-I0

Designing the mobile robot Kevin for a life science laboratory

Laboratories are being increasingly automated. In small laboratories individual processes can be fully automated, but this is usually not economically viable. Nevertheless, individual process steps can be performed by flexible, mobile robots to relieve the laboratory staff. As a contribution to the requirements in a life science laboratory the mobile, dextrous robot Kevin was designed by the Fraunhofer IPA research institute in Stuttgart, Germany. Kevin is a mobile service robot which is able to fulfill non-value adding activities such as transportation of labware. This paper gives an overview of Kevin's functionalities, its development process, and presents a preliminary study on how its lights and sounds improve user interaction

ILLUSTRATING THE PERCEPTION OF STUDENTS TOWARDS AUTONOMOUS SERVICE ROBOTS IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Research purpose – The purpose of the study was to explore the students’ perceptions towards autonomous service robots, using interviews and, in a novel manner, also their drawings, to generate data. The paper contributes to current knowledge claims around the Techno-Economic Paradigm by providing a greater understanding of, and student response to, autonomous service robots. Additional insights were gained on transformational skills set for tourism practitioners. Design/Methodology/Approach – A qualitative approach followed a participatory research design which was set in a public higher education institution. Undergraduate tourism and hospitality students who had previous exposure and engagement with robots were the purposive sample. The paper draws on the Techno-Economic Paradigm to illuminate how, according to students’ experiences and perceptions, autonomous robots interact in, and disrupt, the tourism industry. Findings – Four main drawings essentially expressed tourism and hospitality students’ perceptions of autonomous service robots in the tourism industry. Centrally there are opportunities for the absorption of robots in certain sectors of the tourism industry. Despite greater use of robots in service-driven industries like tourism, it remains challenging to establish the right balance between humans and robots, and up- and re-skilling transformation would be required of those working in the tourism industry and those studying towards a tourism qualification. This study advances that additional research is still required, including longitudinal studies on the effects of autonomous services in the tourism industry, as well as students’ perception on the use of robots, re-skilling as well as ethical risks to customers, the greater value to the economy and those working in the tourism industry. Originality of the research – The article contributes to the use of visual methodology as part of data generation, specifically how students’ perceptions regarding autonomous robots in the tourism industry were graphically distilled using this methodology

Self-Service Technologies that Appear Human Interacting with Customers: Effects on Third-Party Observers

This dissertation examines the effects of viewing and hearing service failure and recovery interactions between self-service technologies (SSTs) and customers on third-party observers. Third-party observers are those that observe the actions of other customers as they interact with a firm in some way. These observations could occur in the present (face-to-face) or past (watching a video or listening to an audio recording). Third-party observers provide a unique perspective as they can provide a more neutral perspective of a failed service transaction and recovery as compared to the involved customer and firm. This dissertation contributes to the SST literature and to theory by creating a virtual service agent acceptance model. An important grounding theory used is attribution theory. Simply, attribution theory (Heider 1958; Weiner 1985, 2006) posits that we are motivated to attribute meaningful causes to action and behavior. The theory suggests that when faced with the task of appraising an outcome, we broadly make either dispositional attributions, which reside firmly within the individual, or situational attributions, which refer to external factors outside of the individual. Attribution theory has been extended to the service context to explain where failures are attributed, and the causal inferences made by customers when a service failure occurs. While much literature has been written on the attribution process with the interaction between human employees and customers, the literature remains sparse on attribution theory as it relates to third-party observers viewing interactions between SSTs and customers. Additionally, much of the previous research has assumed the locus of causality to be unambiguous, assuming the cause of service failures lies within the firm or employee. This may not always be the case with new SSTs, such as avatars, and the cause of the failure may indeed lie within the customer or with situational aspects. I intend to fill this gap with the dissertation and delve into the mechanisms that drive attribution. As artificial intelligence increases the capabilities of self-service technology and these SSTs progress to be closer and closer to being indistinguishable from real humans, this research is important to managers of firms as they will make decisions on employing self-service technologies, human employees or a mixture of both working side by side. Study 1 specifically explores a service failure and recovery situation between a customer and an SST (i.e., an avatar). Study 1 finds main effects of customer attributes, avatar attributes and important interaction effects of service elements that impact attributions of failure. Further, Study 1 shows how these attributions of failure impact the third-party observer’s satisfaction toward the avatar. Furthermore, Study 1 shows how their perceived satisfaction affects their future approach intention of avatars. These are important findings as they show that third-party observers are able to evaluate service interactions that fail and subsequent recoveries to the failure and use this information to determine their perceived satisfaction and potentially whether or not they intend to use the services they observed in the future. Lastly, Study 1 adds to the attribution theory literature as it left the locus of causality dimension ambiguous allowing the respondent, acting as the third-party observer, to attribute the failure to not only the firm or avatar, but also the customer. This is an important gap to fill as it allows the observer the opportunity to attribute failure to the customer where much of the previous literature has not. Study 2 further extends the virtual service agent acceptance model as it uses appraisal theory to ground the prediction concerning negative emotions and coping responses to an observed failure. Simply, appraisal theory predicts that when observing an event, an observer appraises the event, experiences emotions through this appraisal and copes with the observed event (Lazarus, 1991; Lazarus and Smith, 1988). Study 2 specifically shows the effects of service elements on emotions and coping resources. Moreover, it shows the effects of these coping resources on choice behavior toward SSTs of third-party observers. Study 2 adds to and extends Study 1 and adds robustness to the findings. Together, these studies contribute to the literature in three ways 1) Adding to the emerging AI powered SST literature, 2) blending the established theories of attribution and appraisal theory to form the virtual service agent acceptance model to explain and predict the acceptance of SSTs by third-party observers, and 3) adding to the others literature showing the importance of the effects of observing a customer interact with the firm on third parties in a service interaction

User experience in social robots

Social robots are increasingly penetrating our daily lives. They are used in various domains, such as healthcare, education, business, industry, and culture. However, introducing this technology for use in conventional environments is not trivial. For users to accept social robots, a positive user experience is vital, and it should be considered as a critical part of the robots’ development process. This may potentially lead to excessive use of social robots and strengthen their diffusion in society. The goal of this study is to summarize the extant literature that is focused on user experience in social robots, and to identify the challenges and benefits of UX evaluation in social robots. To achieve this goal, the authors carried out a systematic literature review that relies on PRISMA guidelines. Our findings revealed that the most common methods to evaluate UX in social robots are questionnaires and interviews. UX evaluations were found out to be beneficial in providing early feedback and consequently in handling errors at an early stage. However, despite the importance of UX in social robots, robot developers often neglect to set UX goals due to lack of knowledge or lack of time. This study emphasizes the need for robot developers to acquire the required theoretical and practical knowledge on how to perform a successful UX evaluation.publishedVersio

Sustainable Value Co-Creation in Welfare Service Ecosystems : Transforming temporary collaboration projects into permanent resource integration

The aim of this paper is to discuss the unexploited forces of user-orientation and shared responsibility to promote sustainable value co-creation during service innovation projects in welfare service ecosystems. The framework is based on the theoretical field of public service logic (PSL) and our thesis is that service innovation seriously requires a user-oriented approach, and that such an approach enables resource integration based on the service-user’s needs and lifeworld. In our findings, we identify prerequisites and opportunities of collaborative service innovation projects in order to transform these projects into sustainable resource integration once they have ended