Abstract
Despite several studies investigating customer reactions to service robots, the literature lacks knowledge on customers’ discrete emotions towards service robots across different service types. Thus, the purpose of our research is to identify the effects of human-robot interactions in different service types (elderly care and retail service) on customers’ emotions (fear, anger, sadness, shame, enjoyment, and interest). Moreover, we investigate the effects of robot gender on customers’ emotions, as well as its interaction with customer gender and service type. Methodologically, we conducted semi-structured interviews and a scenario-based experiment. The results show stronger emotions of fear and sadness towards service robots in elderly care, whereas the emotion of enjoyment was more intense in retail. Except for sadness, we do not find differences in emotional reactions concerning a robot’s gender. Furthermore, we find neither an interaction effect between robot gender and customer gender nor between robot gender and service type on emotions. Our findings reveal that the service type in which a service robot is applied can be of crucial importance in affecting customers’ emotional reactions. Despite these differences, the intensity of the examined emotions was rather small to moderate, implicating that a mere implementation of service robots does not necessarily evoke a strong emotional (positive or negative) arousal.
