| With the increasing popularity of service robots in different industries,such as catering,accommodation,medical care,and logistics,the interactive experience between customers and service robots has been constantly enriched.Human-robot service is now partly replacing the human-human service.However,it’s difficult for service robots to avoid service failures on purpose in real practice,and there’s also technology barrier to perform appropriate and timely service recovery.When facing shortage of front-line employee,encouraging customers to participate in service recovery has become a promising strategy to help facilitate the service robot recovery.Previous research lacks in-depth study on customer experience and mechanisms of robot service,especially in the field of service failure and recovery.Based on Automated Social Presence Theory,Social Exchange Theory and Compensatory Control Theory,this study explores the impact of service robot’s anthropomorphism on customers’ intention to participate in service recovery and psychological mechanism underneath.Besides,we will go further to find out how service failure type and different recovery strategies influence the intention of participating service recovery.The paper conducts secondary data analysis(Study 1)and four experiments(Study 2-4B),suggesting that service robot’s anthropomorphism has a positive influence on customers’ participation in service recovery.The main effect(Study2)and mediation effect lie in the fact that customers lose their sense of control due to service failure.In order to restore the sense of control,customers prefer stronger external agents,where highly anthropomorphic robots with more social cues can improve customers’ perceived warmth and competence.When interacting with highly anthropomorphic robots,customers perceive higher controllability and obtain more pleasant experience,which further enhance customers participation intention in service recovery.From the perspective of social exchange,interaction with highly anthropomorphic service robots improves intrinsic rewards,thereby enhancing customers’ participation intention.The mediation effect is examined by Study 3 and alternative explanation of perceived corporate support is excluded.Study 4A and 4B find that the failure type and robots’ service recovery tactics moderate the effects above significantly.This paper firstly examines the effect of service robot’s anthropomorphism on customers’ intention to participate in service recovery.Related studies only mentioned the role of service robots or front-line employees in service recovery,and ignored the possibility of customer participation.This research fills the gap and provides an idea for corporate to better solve the service failure problem.Furthermore,it offers an instruction to upgrade customers’ robot service and interaction experience,realize service customization,and help optimize human resource. |
