Anxious Attachment Style and Consumer Physiological Emotional Responses to Human–Robot Service Interactions

Despite the growing integration of service robots in the service sector, there is limited understanding of consumer emotional responses to interactions with service robots compared to those with human agents. Moreover, it is unclear whether all consumers respond to the interaction with service robots in the same way. This study extends prior literature on the role of consumer-related factors in human–frontline service robot interaction by identifying a novel trait-like construct affecting consumer emotional responses to service robots in hospitality. Specifically, the present study aims to examine how consumer-related differences in working models of social behavior, specifically attachment styles, affect their automatic emotional reactions to service robots in hospitality settings. We performed a lab experiment to investigate the impact of individual anxious attachment style scores on a consumer physiological emotional response (heart rate variability [HRV]) to a human versus robot (male voice) service agent in a virtual service interaction. We asked participants to interact with a service agent (Human vs. Robot) in a hotel reception area recreated in virtual reality (VR). The results of a lab experiment using a VR and biosensors reveal that consumers with low (vs. high) scores on anxious attachment style measures show a decrease in automatic emotional response (via HRV) to a service robot (compared to a human agent).