Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Boyu Lin

Boyu Lin is a Ph.D. student in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. His interests focus on consumer behavior in tourism and hospitality, especially social media, artificial intelligence, and service marketing.

Woojin Lee

Woojin Lee is an associate professor in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. She earned her Ph.D. from Texas A&M University and holds a masters’ degree in Hotel Administration from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Dr. Lee’s research interests lie primarily in examining the impacts of information technology on online consumer behavior, especially the effects of social media and mobile applications on tourism marketing and advertising strategies. Recently, Dr.Lee is focusing on exploring the effects of social media, sharing economy, artificial intelligence, and smart technologies on tourism marketing and advertising strategies.

Abstract (150 Words)

Hotels are increasingly adopting autonomous service robots and this trend has been accelerated by the event of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, customers will have more opportunities to interact with these innovations. Therefore, there is a need to identify the factors that affect the guests’ initial trust in these service robots and their willingness to adopt these applications in hotels even after this pandemic. The proposed mixed method will be applied to investigate the expected following results, 1) four exogenous variables of the UTAUT (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facility condition) have distinctive effects on initial trust; 2) the three forces of ITM (institutional, personal and environmental factors) affect the initial trust, which contributes to the intention to adopt autonomous service robots in hotels; and 3) familiarity with the autonomous service robots moderates the relationship between the four constructs in UTAUT and initial trust. This paper highlights the value of the initial trust and the moderator of familiarity, which are expected to have a significant impact on the intention to adopt autonomous service robots in hotels in the post-pandemic age. The theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.

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Trust Building for Autonomous Service Robots in Hotels

Hotels are increasingly adopting autonomous service robots and this trend has been accelerated by the event of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, customers will have more opportunities to interact with these innovations. Therefore, there is a need to identify the factors that affect the guests’ initial trust in these service robots and their willingness to adopt these applications in hotels even after this pandemic. The proposed mixed method will be applied to investigate the expected following results, 1) four exogenous variables of the UTAUT (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facility condition) have distinctive effects on initial trust; 2) the three forces of ITM (institutional, personal and environmental factors) affect the initial trust, which contributes to the intention to adopt autonomous service robots in hotels; and 3) familiarity with the autonomous service robots moderates the relationship between the four constructs in UTAUT and initial trust. This paper highlights the value of the initial trust and the moderator of familiarity, which are expected to have a significant impact on the intention to adopt autonomous service robots in hotels in the post-pandemic age. The theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.