Research On The Influence Mechanism Of Robot Transparency On Employee’s Acceptance Under Human-Robot Collaboration

With the rapid development of digital technology,the application of robots and other technologies in various industries is becoming more and more widespread.Especially in the context that China is in a critical period of manufacturing transformation and upgrading,the report of the 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasizes the promotion of high-end and intelligent development of manufacturing industries.As the key development area identified in Made in China2025 and an important part of intelligent manufacturing,the large-scale application of industrial robots in the manufacturing industry has become major the trend.The popularity of robots has attracted widespread attention from both academic circles,and there have been rich discussions on the impact of robot scale applications.However,there is limited research on the impact of robots on frontline employees at the micro level.In view of this,from the perspective of robot transparency,this study explores the impact of robot transparency on employee’s acceptance under human-robot collaboration,and introduces human-robot trust to explore the mechanism of robot transparency on employee acceptance in depth from two aspects: cognition-based trust and affect-based trust.In addition,this study uses robot anthropomorphism as a moderating variable to discuss the boundary conditions of this mechanism.This study designed two scenario experiments to collect data.Experiment 1 examined the main effect of robot transparency on employee’s acceptance and the mediating role of human-robot trust,while Experiment 2 further examined the main and mediating effects,as well as the moderating role of robot anthropomorphism.This paper tests the hypotheses based on the data collected from two scenario experiments,and the experimental results show that(1)robot transparency positively affects employee’s acceptance;(2)robot transparency positively affects cognition-based trust,and the effect on affect-based trust is not significant;(3)cognition-based and affect-based trust positively affect employee’s acceptance;(4)cognition-based trust mediates the relationship between transparency and employee’s acceptance,and the mediating effect of affect-based trust is not significant;(5)robot anthropomorphism negatively moderated the relationship between transparency and cognition-based trust,and the effect of transparency on cognition-based trust was stronger in situations where anthropomorphism was lower;and(6)robot anthropomorphism moderated the mediating effect of cognition-based trust between transparency and employee’s acceptance.This study explores the relationship between robot transparency and employee’s acceptance,and further discusses the mediating role of human-robot trust as well as the moderating role of robot anthropomorphism.This paper enriches the research related to human-robot collaboration and has positive implications for the implementation practice of robots in enterprises.