The Effect of Trust and its Antecedents on Robot Acceptance

TL;DR

This study investigates how first impressions of a social robot influence trust and acceptance, revealing that perceived trustworthiness mediates the relationship between initial perceptions and willingness to use the robot.

Contribution

It introduces a model linking first impressions, trustworthiness, and acceptance in social robots, supported by empirical data from an Amazon Mechanical Turk study.

Findings

Trustworthiness mediates the effect of first impressions on trust.

First impressions of warmth and competence influence trust and acceptance.

Trustworthiness and trust sequentially mediate the relationship between perceptions and behavioral intention.

Abstract

As social and socially assistive robots are becoming more prevalent in our society, it is beneficial to understand how people form first impressions of them and eventually come to trust and accept them. This paper describes an Amazon Mechanical Turk study (n = 239) that investigated trust and its antecedents trustworthiness and first impressions. Participants evaluated the social robot Pepper's warmth and competence as well as trustworthiness characteristics ability, benevolence and integrity followed by their trust in and intention to use the robot. Mediation analyses assessed to what degree participants' first impressions affected their willingness to trust and use it. Known constructs from user acceptance and trust research were introduced to explain the pathways in which one perception predicted the next. Results showed that trustworthiness and trust, in serial, mediated the relationship between first impressions and behavioral intention.