Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600

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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser

Can chatbot customer service match human service agents on customer

satisfaction? An investigation in the role of trust
Dongling Huang a, 1, Dmitri G. Markovitch b, 1, Rusty A. Stough a, b, 1, *
a
Marketing at the David Nazarian College of Business and Economics, California State University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8377, USA
b
Marketing at Maine Business School, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Handling Editor: Prof. H. Timmermans Consumers prefer human service over chatbots in some contexts. We draw on treatments of trust in information
systems research to propose a three-tiered model of trust which posits that customer outcomes following chatbot
Keywords: service are influenced by dispositional trust in service technologies, generalized learned trust in chatbots, and
Customer service particularized situational trust in one’s chatbot service-giver. Our empirical tests, based on 643 participants in 3
Chatbots
studies, show that dispositional trust partially mediates the effect of learned trust. We also evaluate two alter­
Artificial intelligence
native chatbot service configurations to help improve customer acceptance. The approach which combined
Trust
Dispositional trust chatbot service with a light touch human intervention matched the human service condition on most customer
Trust propensity outcomes.
Learned trust
Situational trust
Satisfaction
Loyalty
Recommendation acceptance

In an era dominated by technology, humans will always win on
experience. That’s why Internova Travel Group, one of the industry’s
largest travel services companies … announced the launch of a new
advertising campaign to remind consumers that choosing to book travel
through humans may be the best travel decision they could ever make
(Internova Travel Group, 2021).
Along with ease of use, trust is a key component of a consumer’s
satisfaction with a digital experience (Gartner, Inc. 2018).
1. Introduction
A chatbot is a computer program designed to conduct human con­
versation via text online or via voice using text-to-speech (Ciechanowski
et al., 2019; Mariani et al., 2023). Although chatbots have existed since
the 1960s, dramatic advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural
language processing are driving a recent wave of chatbot adoption in
commercial customer service applications (i.e., Aleedy et al., 2019;
Shumanov and Johnson, 2021). Yet, until recently, chatbots’ functional
limitations have pressed organizations to rely on human agents to
perform complex service tasks while using chatbots predominantly in
supporting roles. The advent of generative AI programs, such as
ChatGPT and Bard, promises to finally enable full automation of
customer service encounters.
Chatbot-based customer service offers critical advantages over
human service, such as lower cost at scale, 24/7 on-demand availability,
and scalability (i.e. Pizzi et al., 2021). A customer service chatbot
platform adopted in a single organization can be made uniform with
respect to agent training and expertise, and be unaffected by factors that
normally degrade human performance, such as fatigue, memory lapses,
and distractions. Understandably, organizations have a powerful
incentive to replace human agents with artificial intelligence (AI)
chatbots in customer service (Wang et al., 2022; Sands et al., 2021).
To achieve success with full automation, organizations will first need
to overcome consumer mistrust of chatbot service. Surveys of consumer
sentiment toward AI consistently show that consumers view chatbots as
being less understanding, empathetic or flexible, and harder to deal with
than human agents (e.g., Li et al., 2023; Hsu and Lin, 2023; Clark, 2022;
Gartner, 2018; Sheehan et al., 2020; Beaner, 2022; Pegasystems, 2019;

* Corresponding author. Maine Business School. 5723 DP Corbett Business Building, Orono, ME 04469.
E-mail addresses: dongling.huang@csun.edu (D. Huang), dmitri.markovitch@maine.edu (D.G. Markovitch), rusty.stough@maine.edu (R.A. Stough).
1
The authors contributed equally to this research. The names are listed alphabetically.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2023.103600
Received 26 August 2023; Received in revised form 7 October 2023; Accepted 9 October 2023
Available online 17 October 2023
0969-6989/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D. Huang et al.
Rese et al., 2020; Hill et al., 2015). The referenced studies all report
lower consumer trust in and preference for chatbot service, compared
with human agents. Of note, the most capable generative AI chatbots
making the headlines are controversial for different reasons, and raise a
host of other concerns involving their ethics, accuracy, and trustwor­
thiness (e.g., Bowman, 2023; Pegoraro et al., 2023; Roose, 2023; Jabeur
et al., 2023).
Inspired by the practical challenge of achieving consumer accep­
tance of chatbot service, we set out to explore the role of trust in how
consumers experience and respond to chatbots. We propose a novel
three-tiered model of trust in chatbots which posits that customer out­
comes following chatbot service provision and, hence, chatbot accep­
tance, are influenced by one’s propensity to trust service technologies,
generalized learned trust in chatbots, and particularized situational trust
in one’s chatbot service-giver. This is our first contribution. Our second,
empirical, contribution consists in testing the impact of trust on con­
sumer chatbot acceptance. This contribution addresses a notable gap in
the literature (see Web Appendix A for a summary). Despite the prolif­
eration of theoretical and empirical articles addressing the impact of AI
on marketing phenomena, empirical research exploring the impact of
trust on customer experience with chatbot service has been quite
limited.
We present three studies, collected online in the United States of
America, which test our research hypotheses. We use Study 1 (n = 199)
to confirm that individuals will report higher customer satisfaction,
repatronage intentions, and service agent’s recommendation acceptance
(henceforth referred to as our focal customer outcomes) when served by
a human agent versus a chatbot in our research setting. Study 1 also
explores whether an individual’s (1) propensity to trust service tech­
nologies or (2) generalized learned trust in chatbots impact the focal
customer outcomes when individuals are served by a chatbot. Study 2 (n
= 225) primes trust in the chatbot service provider to test whether
manipulating provider-specific situational trust can impact customer
experience with chatbot service. Study 3 (n = 219) evaluates two
chatbot service configurations informed by our trust framework to see if
they can match the human service condition on the focal customer
outcomes.
2. Theory and hypotheses
2.1. The role of trust in consumer acceptance of chatbot customer service
Trust plays a central role in business and social transactions and
relationships (Dwyer et al., 1987). It influences consumers’ willingness
to engage in market exchanges and rely on providers (Garbarino and
Johnson, 1999). Trust is a known factor in automation acceptance (Hoff
and Bashir, 2015). Research in the “computers as social actors” para­
digm shows that people react socially to computers, which also places
trust at the center of human-computer interactions (e.g., Nass and Moon,
2000; Xu et al., 2022). Glikson and Woolley (2020, p. 230) note that
“trust is particularly relevant to the human-AI relationship because of
the perceived risk embedded in human-AI relations, due to the
complexity and non-determinism of AI behaviors.” In other words,
consumers may never sufficiently understand AI and, hence, are
compelled to rely on some degree of trust when interacting with AI
agents.
Trust is particularly important in consumer acceptance of generative
AI chatbots as service-givers. These chatbots combine highly evolved
capabilities that enable human-level performance with fundamental
limitations that undermine their trustworthiness. Central to the
contradiction is the fact that generative AI uses machine learning to infer
information. This process is known to produce inaccuracies and outright
falsehoods, which, nevertheless, sound highly plausible. Equally
important, “as language models (LMs) scale, they develop many novel
behaviors, good and bad” (Perez et al., 2022, p. 1). For example, the
early version of Bing Chat displayed troubling behavior in spite of being
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600
tested extensively before launch (Bowman, 2023; Roose, 2023). A key
challenge is that such novel behaviors are hard to predict and correct
because they are dynamic (e.g., see Bowman (2023) for an overview and
Simon Willison’s weblog at https://simonwillison.net/2023/for current
commentary on generative AI).
Importantly, trust is known to affect perceptions of customer service
provision, value, and outcomes as experienced or perceived. Trust in­
fluences how consumers experience exchanges and interactions by
reducing perceived risk, anxiety, and discomfort (McLean et al., 2021;
Pavlou, 2003). Thus, higher trust in a provider can make service in­
teractions relatively more pleasant and satisfying. Trust motivates
greater acceptance of provider recommendations, which, depending on
the service context, may enable better regimen compliance or more
appropriate product selection and use (McKnight et al., 2002), thus
enabling better results and user experience. Consumers who trust the
provider also show greater commitment and belief in the value of its
offerings while spending less effort to consider alternative solutions
(Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Consistent with these results, empirical
research finds a positive relationship between trust and customer
satisfaction, including as a mediator variable, although the direction of
causality has not been fully established (Chu et al., 2012; Geyskens et al.
1998).
2.2. The trust construct
Most researchers conceptualize trust based on their specific disci­
plinary perspective, which has given rise to varying definitions of trust
(McKnight et al., 2002). In customer service situations, customers can
never be certain that the provider’s representative is knowledgeable and
genuinely willing to help. Hence, the marketing literature tends to
emphasize in its conception of trust the trustor’s confidence in the
trustee’s competence and reliability. For example, Morgan and Hunt
(1994, p. 23) define trust as the feeling of “confidence in the exchange
partner’s reliability and integrity.” Garbarino and Johnson (1999, p. 73)
define trust in organizational settings as “customer confidence in the
quality and reliability of the services offered by the organization.”
Barber (1983, p. 14) notes that trust generally entails “the expectation of
a technically competent role performance.”
Various models of trust have been proposed in psychology, sociol­
ogy, engineering, information systems, and the business disciplines.
Most models identify the trustor (e.g., a consumer), the context, and the
trustee (e.g., a provider’s sales or service agent) as distinct sources of
variability in trust (Lee and See, 2004; Mayer et al., 1995). The mar­
keting literature, including service research, has, most extensively,
employed theoretical frameworks and measures centered on the trustee.
This literature emphasizes the critical importance of the provider’s
perceived competence, integrity, and benevolence in instilling trust (e.
g., Basso and Pizzutti, 2016; Doney and Cannon, 1997; also, see a
meta-analysis by Geyskens et al. 1998).
Our theoretical development deviates from this paradigm in that it
builds on trust frameworks developed in the information systems liter­
ature and human factors research, which are both thematically related
to our exploration. The specific model we build on argues that the
trustor-, trustee-, and context-based factors find a distinct expression in
three inter-related trust layers: dispositional trust, learned trust, and
situational trust (Hoff and Bashir, 2015; Mariani et al., 2023; Marsh and
Dibben, 2003; McKnight et al., 2002). Dispositional trust encompasses a
trustor’s stable personality characteristic of being more or less trusting
towards others. Learned trust reflects one’s trust behavior towards a
particular entity arising from experience and other learning behaviors,
whereas situational trust reflects one’s trusting stance adjusted based on
situational cues present during an exchange (e.g.,Marsh and Dibben,
2003). Hence, the model presents a dynamic perspective on trust which
evolves in the moment and over time.
Nevertheless, the prevalent approaches to studying trust in tech­
nologies show a notable limitation. As McKnight et al. (2011, p. 2) point
D. Huang et al.
out, even “within the Information Systems (IS) domain, as in other
fields, trust is usually examined and defined in terms of trust in people
without regard for trust in the technology itself.” Therefore, we extend
the model to reflect the specificities of service interactions involving a
non-human trustee. Our model proposes three layers of trust which, a
priori, are relevant to chatbot acceptance—(1) dispositional trust to­
wards service technologies, (2) learned trust in chatbots, in general, and
(3) situational trust in the specific chatbot providing a service. Of note,
this distinct combination of trust factors reflects two ubiquitous service
scenarios—when a consumer interacts with a particular service pro­
vider’s chatbot for the first time or only once. In either case, there is no
particularized learned trust in the chatbot representing the provider, but
all consumers will vary in terms of dispositional trust, and have prior
general experience involving chatbots or AI assistants and, hence, have
developed more or less generalized learned trust in chatbots.
2.3. Trust in people versus trust in technology
There are important conceptual similarities between trust in people
and trust in technology. Both trust phenomena arise when one chooses
to rely on another party (i.e., either a human or a chatbot) to achieve an
objective under uncertainty and lack of total control. Both phenomena
also involve expectations of competent performance, although, a chat­
bot’s perceived competency will derive from its perceived adequacy for
the task (van Wezel et al., 2021). In both cases, there is an expectation of
benevolence—that the agent’s purpose is to help, and also that human or
chatbot service agents will be honest with the customer (Chung et al.,
2020). Hence, chatbots can be evaluated based on the same fundamental
trust antecedents as human trustees. Moreover, the nomological
network surrounding trust in technology is similar to trust in people and
includes the common trust types and linkages attributed to interpersonal
relationships (McKnight et al., 2011).
2.4. Dispositional trust in service technologies
Mayer et al., 1995, p. 715), in their widely cited work, define
dispositional trust as an individual’s “general willingness to trust
others.” Also called trust propensity, dispositional trust represents a
personality trait that reflects an individual’s tendency to see the best in
others and have a kind of belief in humanity that leads one to be more
trusting irrespective of other factors, including the provider’s attributes
(McKnight et al., 1998).
In a similar vein to interpersonal trust, individuals display variability
in trust propensity towards technology in general (Hoff and Bashir,
2015), as well as distinct classes of technologies (McKnight et al., 2011).
In the latter case, a trusting stance towards a class of technologies rep­
resents a lower-order construct, whereby trusting beliefs emanate from
one’s dispositional trust in technology (Serva et al., 2005). This pre­
disposition to trust specific technologies essentially reflects beliefs that
the technologies have beneficial attributes. For example, an individual
with a higher propensity to trust in service technologies (e.g., automated
teller machines (ATMs), self-service kiosks, automated customer service,
etc.) is more likely to assume that these technologies are reliable,
functional, safe, useful, and help to improve one’s quality of life
(McKnight et al., 2011). The trust-in-automation research stream fea­
tures several studies which explore dispositional trust in particular
technologies. For instance, Biros et al. (2003) report that individuals
with a higher dispositional trust in computers showed greater accep­
tance of inputs from drones.
Unlike learned trust, which evolves following every interaction, and
situational trust, which is influenced by context in the moment, dispo­
sitional trust tends to be relatively stable across situations, because it is a
feature of one’s psychological makeup. People with different life’s ex­
periences, personality traits and cultural backgrounds differ in their
dispositional trust. For example, the Japanese are known to be more
trusting than others (e.g., Fukuyama, 1995), including towards robotic
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600
technology (Rau et al., 2009). However, longer-term, dispositional trust
may evolve, influenced by accumulating experiences (Hoff and Bashir,
2015), which initially inform learned trust. People also develop greater
trust towards other individuals and technologies as they age (e.g.,
Greiner and Zednik, 2019). For example, Ho et al. (2005) find that older
individuals trust and rely more on technology-based decision aids than
younger people.
Importantly, the degree of one’s trust in a trustee directly influences
one’s experiences with the trustee, including satisfaction (Chu et al.,
2012; Geyskens et al. 1998). “Trusting stance means that one assumes …
better outcomes from dealing with people as though they are well
meaning and reliable” (McKnight et al., 2002, p. 340). These trust effects
also extend to human-AI interactions (for an overview of the literature
on human reactions to AI, see Glikson and Woolley, 2020). Hence, in­
dividuals with higher dispositional trust in technology are likely to
perceive their chatbot interactions in a more favorable light than in­
dividuals who score low on dispositional trust in technology. Formally.
H1. Dispositional trust in service technologies is positively associated
with customer satisfaction, repatronage intentions, and recommenda­
tion acceptance following interactions with chatbot customer service.
2.5. Learned trust
The development of trust is a dynamic process (Lee and See, 2004).
In the absence of relevant information or prior experience, individuals
may adopt a trusting stance towards a service provider based on their
trust propensity. Subsequently, consumer trust towards a service pro­
vider will evolve as consumers interact with the provider, experience
service outcomes, and update their knowledge structures, beliefs, and
attitudes (Mayer et al., 1995; McKnight et al., 2002). Hence, personal
experience is a key mechanism in trust development, although, this trust
layer is also influenced by word of mouth (e.g., Meuter et al., 2013; Kong
et al., 2020), and various learning processes, including observational
learning (Zhang, 2010). Accordingly, the resultant form of trust is often
referred to as learned trust. Where it exists, learned trust is believed to
supersede dispositional trust in its impacts on consumer behavior
(Marsh and Dibben, 2003).
Learned trust initially develops in the form of particularized trust, or
trust towards a specific trustee (e.g., Glanville and Shi, 2020). Over time,
as individuals interact with (or learn about) multiple entities in a subject
class, they develop trusting beliefs towards the entire class of similar
trustees. An accumulation of positive experiences, hence, engenders
generalized learned trust towards the ‘average’ representative of the
class (e.g., Freitag and Traunmüller, 2009). Various studies in the field
of robotics, automation, and AI find a similar trajectory in human trust
towards AI (Glikson and Woolley, 2020; Ullman and Malle, 2017). For
instance, Bartneck et al. (2009) show that a positive interaction with a
robotic pet improved the study participants’ attitude towards robots in
general.
Based on this literature, we assume that learned trust in some service
providers extends to similar provider types. In particular, a consumer
who has experienced satisfactory chatbot-based customer service by
some providers is more likely to develop generalized trust in chatbots
and expect similarly satisfactory outcomes in future service encounters
involving other chatbots. Drawing on the research which shows a pos­
itive relationship between trust and one’s experiences with a trustee
(McKnight et al., 2002), we posit that higher learned trust in chatbot
service, in general, will favorably impact customer outcomes following
specific chatbot service encounters. Stated formally:
H2. Generalized learned trust in chatbots is positively associated with
service satisfaction, repatronage intentions, and recommendation
acceptance following interactions with chatbot customer service.
Moreover, scholars often model trust as a mediating variable which
links various antecedents with important outcomes, including those
studied in this research (for an overview, see meta-analysis by Geyskens
D. Huang et al.
et al. 1998). For example, Benamati et al. (2009) report that trust in an
online vendor mediates consumer intentions to transact with its website.
In their study of supplier-retailer dyads, Morgan and Hunt (1994) find
support for trust as a key mediator between relationship antecedents,
such as expected benefits and shared values, and relationship outcomes,
including acquiescence, loyalty, and cooperation. Auh (2005) extends
Morgan and Hunt’s key mediating variable model to show that trust
fully mediates the effect on loyalty of a service provider’s social and
relational (i.e., soft) attributes, but only partially mediates the effect of
hard attributes, such as perceived performance quality. In research that
is directly related to our investigation, Lin et al. (2021) examine con­
sumer acceptance of a virtual salesperson’s recommendation when it
conflicts with other customers’ recommendations. They find that trust in
a virtual salesperson fully mediates the link between conflicting reviews
and the willingness to follow a virtual agent’s recommendation. In
contrast, Ameen et al. (2021) report that consumer trust only partially
mediates the perceived impact of AI-enabled service quality, conve­
nience, and personalization on AI-enabled customer experience.
Consistent with this, the trust literature points to a likely causal
ordering between dispositional and learned trust. Dispositional trust is
typically treated as the highest-order construct. It is believed to influ­
ence one’s behavior in risky unfamiliar contexts, including interactions
with unfamiliar (types of) service providers and AI chatbots (Hasan
et al., 2021; Schultz, 2006). Over time, the other party’s trustworthiness
is revealed. In this way, dispositional trust acts as an important mech­
anism which facilitates experiential learning and learned trust forma­
tion. Subsequently, in situations involving familiar trustees, one’s
behavior and outcomes will be influenced increasingly by learned trust.
The impact of dispositional trust on outcomes will also increasingly flow
through learned trust. In other words, learned trust represents a
second-order construct which likely mediates the effect of dispositional
trust. Formally:
H3a. Generalized learned trust in chatbots mediates the effect of
dispositional trust in service technologies on satisfaction, repatronage in­
tentions, and recommendation acceptance following interactions with
chatbot customer service.
Our hypothesis H3 is motivated by the view of causal relationships
between trust components which is prevalent in the trust literature (e.g.,
Mayer et al., 1995; McKnight et al., 2011). However, alternative per­
spectives also exist. There is a less well-developed, primarily theoretical,
view which points to dispositional trust as a possible mediator of learned
trust. First, there is evidence of reverse causality. One’s trust propensity
is relatively stable, but it is not fixed—changes simply occur over a
longer time-frame. They are influenced by accumulated experiences and
feedback concerning outcomes linked to trusting behaviors (Hoff and
Bashir, 2015; McKnight et al., 2011). Additionally, technologies evolve,
and dispositional trust will reflect updated beliefs that capture tech­
nology advancement and learned trust experience. In other words,
learned trust also induces changes in dispositional trust. Moreover,
dispositional trust may continue to affect one’s trusting beliefs and be­
haviors after trustworthiness has been established. It acts as a lens
through which one sees social interactions and which is used to interpret
trustees’ actions (Govier, 1994; Lewis and Weigert, 1985). We formalize
this perspective on the role of dispositional trust as a competing hy­
pothesis as follows:
H3b. Dispositional trust in service technologies mediates the effect of
generalized learned trust in chatbots on satisfaction, repatronage in­
tentions, and recommendation acceptance following interactions with
chatbot customer service.
2.6. Situational trust
Situational trust is the trust that develops during a particular service
interaction in a particular setting. It is a function of multiple factors,
some of which are internal to the trustor, and others—specific to the
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600
trustee or the service environment (e.g., Geyskens et al. 1998). Unlike
dispositional trust, which represents a durable personality trait, internal
situational trust antecedents are more transitory and context-specific.
One widely explored trust antecedent is domain expertise, or con­
sumer knowledge (Hoff and Bashir, 2015). Expertise has a profound
impact on consumer behavior (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987), including
the extent of information search and acceptance of external product
reviews. For example, Chinchanachokchai et al. (2021) show that
domain experts have higher confidence in user-generated product rec­
ommendations than AI-generated recommendations. Other internal
factors influencing situational trust include the trustor’s self-efficacy,
mood, and attention capacity during an interaction (Hoff and Bashir,
2015; Lee and See, 2004). For example, greater computer self-efficacy
positively impacts trust in decision support systems (DSS), compli­
ance, and DSS adoption (Madhavan and Phillips, 2010).
External influences on situational trust are contextual cues that
impact consumer perceptions of a service provider’s trustworthiness.
Hence, some of these factors pertain to the task and circumstances,
including task difficulty, task framing, and risk perceptions (Hoff and
Bashir, 2015). Structural characteristics of the service environment also
play a notable role (McKnight et al., 2002. These are third-party
mechanisms that motivate situational trust by minimizing the
perceived risk or otherwise enhancing the likelihood of the provider
performing as expected. Examples of such “structural assurance” factors
include legal protections, protections from credit card companies, es­
crows, warranties, third party certifications, and seals of approval
(Burke, 2002; Kennedy et al., 2001).
In addition, a service provider’s attributes may greatly influence
perceptions of trustworthiness (e.g., Chen and Dhillon, 2003; Doney and
Cannon, 1997). Several authors propose models which present con­
sumer trust as a function of perceived provider competence, benevo­
lence, integrity, and reliability (Mayer et al., 1995; McKnight et al.,
2002). Consumer perceptions of these attributes may develop over
multiple interactions with the provider, and, hence, motivate learned
trust, as detailed in the preceding section. Or, they may be informed by
new contextual cues and impact consumer trust during the encounter.
The latter may include the provider’s apparent professionalism (Gregori
et al., 2014), brand recognition (Doney and Cannon, 1997), evidence of
offline presence (Chen and Dhillon, 2003), or website characteristics,
such as ease of use, usefulness, or even visible links to human customer
support (Gefen, 2000). Multiple authors also find that provider
communication, reputation, and evidence of past performance are
particularly germane to trust formation (e.g., Chen and Dhillon, 2003;
Geyskens et al. 1998). Importantly, the same provider attributes that
influence consumer trust in human agents also impact trust in AI tech­
nologies (Glikson and Woolley, 2020). In addition, technology-related
attributes, such as disclosure of information about the operating rules
governing the technology, may further affect situational trust in AI
(Glikson and Woolley, 2020; Hoff and Bashir, 2015).
In sum, extant research indicates that presenting favorable infor­
mation about a service provider’s attributes, certifications, success rate,
and other measures of past performance may have a priming effect and
enhance consumers’ particularized situational trust in that provider.
Higher trust, in turn, should result in better consumer evaluations of
their service experiences with the provider. Hence, we test the following
hypothesis:
H4. Individuals with higher particularized situational trust in a chatbot
providing service will display higher satisfaction, repatronage in­
tentions, and recommendation acceptance following their service in­
teractions with the chatbot than individuals with lower particularized
situational trust.
3. Manipulating trust to improve customer outcomes
Since improving customer trust outcomes in chatbot service
D. Huang et al.
encounters is an important motivation for this research, we next
consider the performance of two practical service configuration ap­
proaches suggested by our theoretical framework. The customer out­
comes attained by a human service agent represent a natural benchmark
for this investigation.
The preceding discussion indicates that situational trust towards a
specific provider can be influenced by contextual cues. This malleability
makes situational trust an ideal focal point for a marketing action. As
hypothesized in H4, higher particularized situational trust is expected to
be associated with generally better customer outcomes. This enables us
to set up our first “non-inferiority” performance test which we express in
the following hypothesis:2
H5. Following a service encounter, individuals with high particularized
situational trust in their chatbot service-giver will report lower satisfac­
tion, repatronage intentions, and recommendation acceptance than in­
dividuals in the human-service-agent condition.
3.1. Low-cost combination of chatbot and human customer service
While fully automated customer service may be the ultimate goal for
most organizations, consumer mistrust of chatbot service in some con­
texts may motivate a gradual transition whereby chatbots will be com­
bined with human agents in distinct ways to achieve operational or
marketing objectives.3 This projection is supported by practitioner sur­
veys which show that a higher proportion of consumers still prefer to be
served by humans rather than chatbots even for basic tasks, such as
opening an account or making a purchase (e.g., Beaner, 2022; Chen
et al., 2022). To the extent that the mistrust in chatbot service may be
deep-rooted and “sticky,” only manipulating particularized situational
trust may be insufficient to achieve satisfactory customer outcomes. We,
hence, consider whether using a chatbot in the lead role with human
support may engender higher consumer trust overall.
One practical chatbot-human service configuration that seemingly
satisfies efficiency objectives could feature a front-line chatbot agent
augmented with a “light-touch” human intervention at the conclusion of
a service encounter. In this setup, the chatbot would be tasked with
resolving a customer issue or making a sale in its entirety. In situations
flagged as non-routine, the encounter would conclude by handing the
consumer over to a human service specialist whose objective would be
to reassure the consumer and upsell, where appropriate. The human
intervention would be selective, last seconds in many cases, and,
therefore, cost little per service encounter on average while generating
incremental sales revenue.
There are two plausible mechanisms whereby even a fleeting human
agent’s addition to chatbot-led service may benefit customer outcomes.
First, consumers currently perceive human service agents as being
generally more trustworthy than chatbots (e.g., Beaner, 2022; Clark,
2022; Gartner, Inc. 2018; Pegasystems, 2019). Based on our framework,
this engages higher dispositional and learned trust, since these trust
layers are interlinked through a feedback loop. Combining a higher-trust
2
Non-inferiority experimental designs, which are prevalent in medicine, test
whether a proposed treatment is at least as good as the standard-of-care. A
positive result can help establish that switching to the new treatment will do no
harm. Our experimental challenge is essentially the same—we seek to identify
service configurations that will at least match human service on key customer
outcomes. Since demonstrating non-inferiority relative to the human service
benchmarks is the objective, we adopt the “non-inferiority” testing framework.
This entails framing the null hypotheses so that the new treatment is posited to
be inferior to the benchmark. The alternative hypothesis is that the new
treatment is non-inferior. A non-inferiority claim is supported if the null hy­
pothesis (of lower performance) is rejected.
3
Although organizational adoption of generative AI is not the focus of this
research, it is noteworthy that business leaders also cite trust as a barrier to AI
adoption, according to a recent IBM survey (Wiggers, 2023).
5
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600
element with a lower-trust element in a system should additively in­
crease the total trust in the system (e.g., Amin-Naseri and Gilbert, 2014).
The established positive relationship between trust and satisfaction (e.
g., Chu et al., 2012) means that consumers will likely feel more positive
about the total service experience delivered by a chatbot-human agent
team.
The second mechanism whereby a human agent’s participation
should boost trust in the chatbot component of the service team involves
the well-documented halo effect. It is a cognitive bias which entails the
tendency for positive impressions of a salient person or characteristic to
influence how other related persons or characteristics are judged (e.g.,
Nisbett and Wilson, 1977). The halo effect has been observed in a variety
of team and system contexts, which are, essentially, similar to our pro­
posed “service team” or “service system” setting. For example, business
scholars find that managers tend to provide more positive evaluations of
subordinates who work in close proximity to them (Ferris et al., 1994).
In systems research, studies routinely find that multicomponent ratings
exhibit higher than expected correlation among the rated components.
For example, movie ratings display an elevated correlation across the
typical movie attributes (Sahoo et al., 2012). Moreover, the halo effect
extends to perceived trustworthiness of technologies. For example,
Gabrieli et al. (2021) report that placing images of trustworthy-looking
human faces on ATMs increased the perceived trustworthiness of the
ATMs compared with the ATMs that featured less trustworthy-looking
faces.
Based on these mechanisms, we proceed to evaluate the proposed
chatbot-human service configuration on the focal performance measures
relative to the human-only configuration. We are primarily interested in
the chatbot-human configuration’s performance under conditions of low
situational trust in the chatbot. However, it is also relevant to consider
the impact that adding a human agent may have when consumers have
high trust in the chatbot. We use the non-inferiority experimental design
to test the following set of hypotheses:
H6a. The proposed chatbot-human service configuration will under­
perform human-only service on the focal customer outcomes under
conditions of low particularized situational trust in the service chatbot.
H6b. The proposed chatbot-human service configuration will under­
perform human-only service on the focal customer outcomes under
conditions of high particularized situational trust in the service chatbot.
We summarize our hypotheses and key flows in Fig. 1. Note that the
consumer preference factors across subjects are controlled through
random assignment to our experimental conditions. The service quality
element of the model is a major factor which affects customer outcomes.
It is assumed to be constant across all our conditions.
4. Research method
4.1. Participants and Procedure
We conducted three experimental studies using the vignette method
(e.g., Jörling et al., 2019; Harborth and Pape, 2021) to test our research
hypotheses. We used Amazon’s MTurk platform to recruit study par­
ticipants and recruited participants from the United States in the fall of
2022. We used a power analysis to ensure adequate samples. Partici­
pants were randomly assigned to six experimental conditions across the
three studies. All the studies opened with scales measuring (1) gener­
alized learned trust in chatbots and, separately, learned trust in human
service agents, and (2) dispositional trust in service technologies and,
separately, dispositional trust in service personnel. We randomized the
order in which the question blocks about chatbots and human agents
were presented.
Next, we introduced our experimental vignette (see Web Appendix B
for vignettes and primes) which had the same opening paragraph in all
three studies. It instructed the participants to imagine that they were
reserving a long-planned African safari, accompanied by a renowned
D. Huang et al.
Fig. 1. A model of the three layers of trust and customer service outcomes. The dashed arrow shows the hypothesized alternative mediation pathway. Feedback
effects are not shown for parsimony reasons. HM designates human-agent service. Hypotheses in bold font have received empirical support. * Hypotheses H5, H6a,
and H6b were stated as inferiority hypotheses. Only H6b received non-inferiority support. See Footnote 1 for details.
tour guide. Participants imagined having an initial interaction online
with a reservation agent who was, depending on the condition, either
human (Amy Sullivan) or a chatbot (introduced as “Stella, your AI
Virtual Representative”). Participants were then shown a mock-up of
their imagined online chat with the reservation agent. In all the studies,
the participants were informed that their much-preferred tour guide was
unavailable. Instead, the reservation agent recommended another,
obscure, tour guide, who was new to the company. There was no public
information available about the replacement guide, except for the
reservation agent’s assurance that the guide was “experienced and well
trained, like all our guides.” This introduced an element of uncertainty
and risk—the customer was reserving the vacation of a lifetime at a high
cost, but not getting everything they were hoping to get. Moreover, a key
element of the vacation experience was fundamentally uncertain and, at
a minimum, not as good as the preferred tour guide. From this point, the
vignettes varied across the studies in the following manner.
In Study 1, the participants interacted either with Amy Sullivan, a
human agent, or Stella, the chatbot. The participants did not receive any
further information to facilitate their decision. They were instructed to
imagine that they accepted the reservation agent’s guide recommen­
dation and concluded the reservation. This study additionally embedded
filler information in both conditions in order to create visual and length
equivalency with our experimental conditions in Studies 2 and 3. We
used this study to test hypotheses 1–3.
In Study 2, which tested hypotheses 4 and 5, the participants inter­
acted only with Stella, the chatbot, but were randomly assigned to high-
situational-trust or low-trust conditions. Stella’s recommendation of a
replacement tour guide included additional information about Stella’s
track record and unpacked its implications for the reservation decision.
In the high-trust condition, Stella’s track record showed a 95 percent
customer satisfaction rating with Stella’s recommendations. The
vignette further interpreted the information for the participants,
restating that Stella almost always made good recommendations. In the
low-trust condition, Stella’s track record showed a 50 percent customer
satisfaction rating with Stella’s recommendations. The vignette further
interpreted the information by stating that Stella made good recom­
mendations about half of the time. Study 2 participants were then
instructed to imagine that they accepted the reservation agent’s
recommendation and concluded the reservation.
Study 3, which tested hypotheses 6a and 6b, featured a chatbot
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600
(Stella)-human agent service combination with participants being
assigned either to high-trust or low-trust conditions. As in Study 2,
Stella’s recommendation of a replacement tour guide included the same
additional information about Stella’s track record and implications for
the decision. The participants were then instructed to imagine that they
accepted the reservation agent’s recommendation and concluded the
reservation details, at which point Stella handed the customer over to
the company’s human customer relations manager Marisa Diaz. Marisa
reassured the customer about the replacement tour guide and offered
additional tour options which were declined. This concluded the reser­
vation interaction in Study 3.
4.2. Screens and attention checks
We took several steps to ensure data quality. We asked all partici­
pants whether they had ever made a hotel or vacation reservation and
been on a tour (of any length) with a tour guide. We excluded those who
had not, since they may have difficulty relating to our research scenario.
We also used three comprehension and attention checks and a separate
check to ensure that participants served by Stella understood that Stella
was a chatbot. We excluded participants who failed any of these checks.
Using these filters and checks reduced our total sample by 89 (out of
732) participants and resulted in sample size variation across the
conditions.
4.3. Measures
All the response alternatives in our rating scales discussed below are
measured based on a seven-point scale. Table 1 shows the construction
of our key variables, controls (described in the following sections), and
the associated reliability coefficients.
Dependent variables. To test customer satisfaction we first use a two-
item measure, Satisfaction_Index, which captures (1) the extent to which
participants were satisfied with the reservation interaction overall and
(2) satisfaction with the reservation agent specifically. We also measure
perceived service quality satisfaction using the distinct dimensions of
the SERVPERF scale (Cronin and Taylor, 1994). Over the years, elements
of SERVPERF have been extensively employed to evaluate service
quality satisfaction during distinct service encounters (e.g., Elliott,
1994; Rodrigues et al., 2011). Following the convention, we adapt
D. Huang et al.
Table 1
Variable construction and construct reliability (coefficient alpha).
DVs Items
1. Satisfaction index i. How satisfied or dissatisfied were you
with your reservation interactions overall?
ii. How satisfied or dissatisfied were you
with your reservation representative?
SERVPERF Scale I think that the Customer Service …
2. Efficiency i. Is well organized.
ii. Makes it easy for customers to get their
issues addressed.
3. Responsiveness i. Provides prompt service.
ii. Is willing to help.
4. Empathy i. Has the customers’ best interests at its
core.
ii. Provides individualized attention.
iii. Understands the needs of their
customers.
5. Reliability i. Provides service as promised.
ii. Is error free.
6. Assurances i. Instills confidence in its ability to
provide service.
ii. Is knowledgeable.
7. Provider loyalty i. If you were to make a travel reservation
in the future, how likely would you be to
use the same reservation agency/tour
operator?
8. Recommendation i. How likely would you be to call again
acceptance and modify your reservation to get your
initially chosen tour guide, Jackson
Looseyia? a
IVs
1. Dispositional trust in i. I believe that most service technologies
service technologies are NOT very effective at what they are
designed to do.a
ii. A large majority of service technologies
are excellent.
iii. My typical approach is NOT to trust
new service technologies until they prove
to me that I can rely on them.a
iv. I generally give a service technology the
benefit of the doubt when I first use it.
Dispositional trust in service i. I believe that most service employees are
personnelb NOT very effective in their job roles.a
ii. A large majority of service employees
are excellent.
iii. My typical approach is NOT to trust
service employees until they prove to me
that I can rely on them.a
iv. I generally give service employees the
benefit of the doubt when I first interact
with them.
2. Generalized learned trust On average, the customer service chatbots
in chatbots …
i. were competent and effective
ii. performed their role very well
iii. were honest with me
iv. tried hard to help me
Generalized learned trust in v. acted in my best interests
service personnelb On average, the customer service
employees …
Items i.-v. as above
Controls
1. Experience w/chatbots i. In the past 2 years, how much experience
did you have interacting with Virtual
Assistants (i.e. Siri, Alexa, Google
Assistant)?
ii. In the past 2 years, how much
experience did you have interacting with
customer service Chatbots online?
2. Experience w/human i. In the past 2 years, how much experience
agents did you have interacting with human
customer service representatives online?
ii. In the past 2 years, how much
experience did you have interacting with
human customer service representatives
over the phone?
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600
Table 1 (continued )
DVs Items Alpha
Alpha
3. Involvement How do you feel about African safaris? 0.88
0.87 i. 1 Important – 7 Unimportant a
ii. 1 Uninterested – 7 Interested
iii. 1 Unexciting – 7 Exciting
4. Dispositional trust in i. I believe that people are basically moral. 0.89
people ii. I avoid contacts with others.a
0.82 iii. I believe that most people would lie to
get ahead.a
iv. I can get along with most people.
0.83
Notes: All the items were measured on a 1–7 scale.
a
0.91 The item was reverse-scored.
b
The measure was used in the human-agent condition.
SERVPERF to reflect our specific context. Our scale has five dimensions:
0.8
perceived service responsiveness, empathy, reliability, assurances, and
efficiency. The latter dimension captures the burden on consumers in
0.87 order to receive service. It replaces the “tangibles” dimension in
SERVPERF, which is less relevant to our e-service context. We treat each
SERVPERF dimension as a separate dependent variable in order to
capture the focal effects at a more granular level (e.g., Parasuraman
et al., 1985).
In addition to our primary customer satisfaction variables, we use
two measures of behavioral intent. We measure loyalty towards the
provider by asking about the likelihood of using the same reservation
agency on a future travel occasion. This is a single-item measure that
captures a distinct behavioral loyalty dimension—repatronage in­
0.9 tentions (Jacoby and Chesnut, 1978; Söderlund, 2006). We measure
recommendation acceptance by asking about the likelihood of calling
back to modify the reservation so as to get one’s preferred tour guide.
4.4. Independent variables and controls
Our measure of dispositional trust in service technologies is based on
0.8
a reduced version of the scale adapted from McKnight et al. (2011).
Similarly, we use a five-item scale adapted from Mayer et al., 1995 to
construct our measure of generalized learned trust in chatbots. Con­
sumers who indicated having interacted with customer service chatbots
in the previous two years were asked to rate their previous experience
with the chatbots in terms of the chatbots’ perceived competence,
benevolence, and integrity. We entered missing values on the learned
trust variable where consumers indicated that they had no interactions
with chatbots in the past two years. For the human condition, we use
0.89
slightly modified dispositional and learned trust instruments using the
same scales that, instead of focus on “service technologies,” reference
“service employees” to capture trust measures that are relevant to the
human service condition.
Our situational trust in the specific service-giver chatbot (Stella) was
0.96 primed rather than measured. The primes are described in the “Partic­
ipants and Procedure” section. We developed the primes through
extensive pretests in which various primes were gauged based on their
ability to instill higher (or lower) perceptions of the chatbot’s compe­
0.83
tence, benevolence and integrity. To be practically relevant, our low-
trust prime was calibrated to instill a degree of uncertainty about
Stella’s capabilities, but not outright distrust. Our manipulation checks
in the pretest phase showed a statistically significant separation between
low trust and high trust conditions on measures of Stella’s trustworthi­
0.82 ness. We employed a single-item manipulation check which directly asks
the participants about Stella’s trustworthiness.
To account for possible confoundedness in our analyses, we include
four controls. First, we control for the extent of recent remote in­
teractions with chatbots and AI assistants, and, separately, human
customer service. We also control for involvement, since individuals
who feel strongly about a task may behave differently than individuals
who are less involved. We used a modified version of Zaichkowsky’s
7
D. Huang et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600

(1985) involvement scale. Participants responded on a 1–7 scale how
important, interesting, and exciting going on an African safari was to
them. The three items were combined in an equally weighted index.
Finally, we use a short-form Evans and Revelle (2008) propensity to
trust people scale to measure dispositional trust in people. Note that our
primary interest in this paper is in the trust constructs directly affecting
chatbot perceptions, and we include the dispositional trust in people
variable only as a control.
5. Results
As the first step in our analyses, we tested for significant differences
between experimental conditions on our control and demographic var­
iables (see Web Appendix C for descriptive statistics). None of the mean
differences are significant at p < 0.1. We also compared the conditions
based on a separate check about the extent to which the participants
were concerned about AI replacing human interaction and jobs, since
strong feelings in this regard could bias our results. On average, our
participants displayed low concern about AI, with mean responses
ranging between 3.9 and 4.3 out of seven across the cells.
We also review the pairwise correlations between our trust di­
mensions. We note a moderately high correlation of 0.53–0.68 between
dispositional and learned trust variables in all our chatbot cells. This is
consistent with the hypothesized relationship between those trust di­
mensions. In our five chatbot cells, we note a low and mostly insignifi­
cant correlation between those two variables and the dispositional trust in
people, which we use as a control. We further note a significant 0.42
correlation between the more closely related constructs of dispositional

Table 2
Regressions of customer outcome variables on measures of dispositional trust in service technologies and generalized learned trust in chatbot service in the sample that
received chatbot service. These analyses are based on Study 1.
IVs/DVs = − 1 − 2 − 3 − 4 − 5 − 6 − 7 − 8

Sat_Index Serv_Efficiency Serv_Respons. Serv _Empathy Serv_Reliability Serv_Assurances Provider Loyalty Recomm_Accept

Panel A: test of H1
Disp. Trust in Service Tech 0.522*** 0.465*** 0.246** 0.559*** 0.406*** 0.617*** 0.658*** 0.426**
(0.08) (0.09) (0.08) (0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.10) (0.13)
Experience w/Chatbots 0.14 0.14 0.13 0.09 0.03 0.09 (0.03) (0.06)
(0.10) (0.12) (0.10) (0.11) (0.11) (0.10) (0.12) (0.16)
Experience w/Human CSRa 0.10 0.01 0.03 0.19 0.00 0.09 0.09 0.04
(0.10) (0.11) (0.09) (0.10) (0.10) (0.10) (0.12) (0.15)
Involvement 0.10 0.10 0.05 0.03 0.12 0.15 0.18 − 0.14
(0.08) (0.09) (0.07) (0.08) (0.08) (0.08) (0.09) (0.12)
Disp. Trust in People 0.01 0.12 0.12 (0.03) 0.06 0.02 0.02 0.02
(0.11) (0.12) (0.11) (0.12) (0.11) (0.11) (0.13) (0.17)
adj. R2 0.348 0.241 0.139 0.338 0.191 0.397 0.309 0.072
F 11.97 7.541 4.323 11.53 5.853 14.58 10.23 2.588
p 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.03
N 104 104 104 104 104 104 104 104
Panel B: test of H2
Learned Trust in Chatbots 0.481*** 0.486*** 0.239** 0.529*** 0.482*** 0.561*** 0.584*** 0.23
(0.09) (0.09) (0.08) (0.09) (0.08) (0.09) (0.11) (0.13)
Experience w/Chatbots 0.17 0.17 0.14 0.13 0.05 0.14 (0.02) (0.07)
(0.11) (0.12) (0.10) (0.11) (0.10) (0.11) (0.13) (0.17)
Experience w/Human CSRa 0.09 0.00 0.03 0.18 0.01 0.08 0.08 0.01
(0.10) (0.11) (0.09) (0.10) (0.09) (0.10) (0.12) (0.16)
Involvement 0.07 0.05 0.04 − 0.01 0.06 0.09 0.14 − 0.16
(0.08) (0.09) (0.08) (0.09) (0.08) (0.08) (0.10) (0.13)
Disp. Trust in People 0.10 0.19 0.18 0.07 0.16 0.15 0.09 − 0.01
(0.12) (0.13) (0.11) (0.12) (0.11) (0.12) (0.15) (0.18)
adj. R2 0.286 0.24 0.123 0.298 0.272 0.329 0.227 0.001
F 8.996 7.32 3.807 9.51 8.465 10.8 6.858 1.026
p 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.41
Nb 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 101
Panel C: Full Model
Disp. Trust in Service Tech 0.365** 0.262* 0.148 0.378** 0.144 0.444*** 0.449** 0.433*
(0.12) (0.13) (0.11) (0.12) (0.11) (0.12) (0.15) (0.19)
Learned Trust in Chatbots 0.239* 0.313* 0.141 0.279* 0.386*** 0.268* 0.287* − 0.0574
(0.11) (0.13) (0.11) (0.12) (0.11) (0.11) (0.14) (0.18)
Experience w/Chatbots 0.146 0.16 0.13 0.108 0.0446 0.111 − 0.0415 − 0.0968
(0.10) (0.12) (0.10) (0.11) (0.10) (0.10) (0.13) (0.16)
Experience w/Human CSRa 0.111 0.0146 0.0404 0.198 0.0216 0.101 0.0975 0.0318
(0.10) (0.11) (0.09) (0.10) (0.09) (0.10) (0.12) (0.15)
Involvement 0.087 0.0661 0.0483 0.00367 0.0704 0.114 0.16 − 0.14
(0.08) (0.09) (0.08) (0.08) (0.08) (0.08) (0.10) (0.13)
Disp. Trust in People 0.0553 0.163 0.163 0.0287 0.143 0.099 0.0399 − 0.0614
(0.11) (0.13) (0.11) (0.12) (0.11) (0.11) (0.14) (0.18)
adj. R2 0.347 0.263 0.13 0.357 0.276 0.413 0.291 0.045
F 9.843 6.96 3.485 10.25 7.368 12.71 7.835 1.794
p 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.11
Nb 101 101 101 101 101 101 101 101

Notes: The regressions included a constant which is not shown.

Standard errors are in parentheses.
*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
a
Experience with chatbots/human customer service representatives (CSR) in the previous two years.
b
The samples size (N) is lower in these regressions due to missing values on the Learned Trust in Chatbots variable for individuals who indicated no chatbot exposure
in the previous two years.

8
D. Huang et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600

trust in people and dispositional trust in service personnel in the human-
agent cell. Taken together, the observed statistics are consistent with
our arguments that dispositional trust in people, dispositional trust in
service technologies, and generalized learned trust in chatbots represent
distinct constructs which capture different dimensions of trust.
We used ordinary least squares regression (OLS) to test our hy­
potheses. In addition to the relevant independent variables, all the re­
gressions included four control variables—(the extent of) experience
with chatbots, experience with human customer service, involvement
with respect to African safari vacations, and dispositional trust in
people.
5.1. Study 1
The first aim of Study 1 was to establish the baseline preference for
human or chatbot service in our research sample so that we could
evaluate actions that can make chatbot service more attractive to con­
sumers. We fitted the regressions in the combined sample which
included human-agent and chatbot service conditions with the total of
199 observations. The focal variable was the chatbot service-giver
condition dummy.
The coefficients on the dummy variable indicating chatbot service
were significantly negative in all the regressions, and the p-values were
below 0.05 in all but one case. Concerning the latter, the coefficient on
the service-giver dummy was not significant in the regression of Serv­
ice_Efficiency (from the SERVPERF construct). While contradictory, this
result makes intuitive sense, since the chatbots’ defining characteristic
at this time is their efficiency. Therefore, we conclude that our subjects,
on average, strongly prefer human service.
We next explored whether one’s propensity to trust service tech­
nologies and learned trust in chatbots, based on prior interactions, had a
positive effect on the focal outcomes, as posited in H2 and H3, respec­
tively. To test these hypotheses, we ran separate regressions with the
focal independent variables and controls in the subset served by Stella,
the chatbot. We show the regressions results in Panels A and B of
Table 2. We find the effect of dispositional trust in service technologies on
all the dependent variables to be significantly positive at p < 0.01.
Our results for the effect of generalized learned trust in chatbots are
largely similar, except in the Reservation_Acceptance regression, which is
not statistically significant, implying that dispositional trust may play a
relatively more fundamental role in behavioral responses. We explore
this supposition further in our investigation of mediation paths detailed
below. We also conclude that, taken together, our findings support H1
and H2.
Our hypotheses H3a and H3b specify two alternative mediation
paths for dispositional and learned trust. As the first step, we fitted a full
model with both trust variables (shown in Panel C of Table 2). The
resultant main effect coefficients on the dispositional trust variable
largely maintained their magnitude and significance, unlike the co­
efficients on the learned trust variable, which declined in magnitude and
lost significance in some cases. Next, to test our hypotheses, we ran two
sets of mediation analyses for each dependent variable (summarized in
Table 3). We used Hayes (2018) PROCESS macro with 5000 bootstrap
samples. In the first analysis, we specified dispositional trust in service
technologies as the independent variable and generalized learned trust in
chatbots as the mediator. This analysis produced only two significant (at
p < 0.05) coefficients on the indirect effect of dispositional trust, in the
regressions of Service_Efficiency and Service_Empathy. Thus, our data
provide only limited support for H3a. We then evaluated the reverse
mediation pathway with learned trust as the independent variable and
dispositional trust as the mediator. All but one of the resultant co­
efficients on the indirect effect were positive and statistically significant
(at p < 0.05), consistent with H3b. We conclude that, on balance, these
results provide stronger support for H3b than H3a. Additionally, we note
that we observe only partial mediation, since the direct path on learned
trust remains significant in six out of our eight regressions (see Panel C of
Table 2).
5.2. Study 2
In Study 2, we primed participants for higher or lower situational
trust in the chatbot service-provider. Our purpose was to explore
whether one’s level of particularized situational trust during a service
encounter impacts customer satisfaction with chatbot service and sub­
sequent trusting behaviors. This study used 219 valid observations. As a
manipulation check, we asked participants to rate Stella’s trustworthi­
ness in making tour guide recommendations. The manipulation check
means were 5.23 and 3.88 out of seven in the high-trust and low-trust
conditions, respectively (p < 0.001), indicating that our priming had
successfully created experimental conditions with different levels of
situational trust. We next separately regressed our eight dependent
variables on a dummy variable for situational trust and the controls. The
situational trust variable took the value of one in the high trust condition
and zero otherwise. The results are shown in Tables 4 and 5. All the
regressions are highly significant, with the coefficient on the High_­
Situational_Trust dummy being positive and statistically significant (p <
0.01 or lower) in all the regressions. We conclude that our data provide
strong support for our hypothesis H4.

Table 3
Summary of mediation analysis tests based on Hayes (2018) PROCESS macro with 5000 bootstrap samples. These analyses are based on Study 1.
Independent Variable Mediator Dependent Variable b 95% CI Significance

Panel A: tests of H3a

Dispositional Trust Learned Trust Satisfaction_Index 0.129 [-0.050, 0.310] p> 0.05
Dispositional Trust Learned Trust Serv_Efficiency 0.220 [0.049, 0.417]* p< 0.05
Dispositional Trust Learned Trust Serv_Responsiveness 0.101 [-0.059, 0.292] p> 0.05
Dispositional Trust Learned Trust Serv _Empathy 0.191 [0.001, 0.436]* p< 0.05
Dispositional Trust Learned Trust Serv_Reliability 0.264 [-0.014, 0.435] p> 0.05
Dispositional Trust Learned Trust Serv_Assurances 0.191 [-0.021, 0.425] p> 0.05
Dispositional Trust Learned Trust Provider Loyalty 0.174 [-0.004, 0.373] p> 0.05
Dispositional Trust Learned Trust Recomm_Acceptance 0.169 [-0.009, 0.371] p> 0.05
Panel B: tests of H3b
Learned Trust Dispositional Trust Satisfaction_Index 0.267 [0.108,0.442]* p< 0.05
Learned Trust Dispositional Trust Serv_Efficiency 0.188 [0.029, 0.390]* p< 0.05
Learned Trust Dispositional Trust Serv_Responsiveness 0.110 [-0.074, 0.274] p> 0.05
Learned Trust Dispositional Trust Serv _Empathy 0.264 [0.074, 0.429]* p< 0.05
Learned Trust Dispositional Trust Serv_Reliability 0.117 [0.002, 0.282]* p< 0.05
Learned Trust Dispositional Trust Serv_Assurances 0.299 [0.091, 0.481]* p< 0.05
Learned Trust Dispositional Trust Provider Loyalty 0.218 [0.021, 0.407]* p< 0.05
Learned Trust Dispositional Trust Recomm_Acceptance 0.272 [0.080, 0.477]* p< 0.05

Notes: *p < 0.05.

9
D. Huang et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600

Table 4
Regressions of customer outcome variables on the (high or low) level of situational trust in the chatbot service-provider. These analyses are based on Study 2.
IVs/DVs = − 1 − 2 − 3 − 4 − 5 − 6 − 7 − 8

Sat_Index Serv_Efficiency Serv_Respons. Serv _Empathy Serv_Reliability Serv_Assurances Provider Loyalty Recomm_Accept

Panel A: Situational Trust

High-Situational- Trust 0.856*** 0.607*** 0.457** 0.610** 0.648*** 0.802*** 0.918*** 0.801***
(0.166) (0.165) (0.148) (0.188) (0.160) (0.183) (0.203) (0.223)
Experience w/Chatbotsa 0.0994 0.101 0.0937 0.171* 0.0468 0.11 0.166* − 0.0396
(0.068) (0.067) (0.060) (0.077) (0.065) (0.074) (0.082) (0.091)
Experience w/Human CSRa 0.11 0.0463 0.0367 0.0338 0.0336 0.0868 0.0641 − 0.206*
(0.068) (0.067) (0.061) (0.077) (0.065) (0.075) (0.083) (0.091)
Involvement − 0.0303 − 0.109 0.0545 − 0.116 − 0.0701 − 0.135 − 0.0837 0.304*
(0.109) (0.108) (0.098) (0.124) (0.105) (0.120) (0.133) (0.147)
Disp. Trust in People 0.154 0.152 0.136 0.182 0.197* 0.207* 0.203* 0.154
(0.082) (0.081) (0.073) (0.093) (0.079) (0.091) (0.100) (0.110)
Constant 2.708*** 3.982*** 3.759*** 3.201*** 3.229*** 3.173*** 2.298** 1.797
(0.695) (0.689) (0.621) (0.789) (0.668) (0.766) (0.848) (0.933)
adj. R2 0.142 0.081 0.062 0.081 0.086 0.117 0.121 0.088
F 8.204 4.82 3.905 4.848 5.106 6.763 6.993 5.204
p 0.000 0.000 0.002 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
N 219 219 219 219 219 219 219 219
Panel B: Extended model
High-Situational- Trust 0.798*** 0.573*** 0.425** 0.572*** 0.605*** 0.771*** 0.845*** 0.753***
(0.153) (0.154) (0.132) (0.170) (0.138) (0.160) (0.182) (0.224)
Disp. Trust in Service Tech 0.194* 0.137 0.137 0.207* 0.252*** 0.280** 0.284** 0.0297
(0.082) (0.082) (0.070) (0.091) (0.074) (0.085) (0.097) (0.119)
Learned Trust in Chatbots 0.291*** 0.296*** 0.343*** 0.383*** 0.327*** 0.340*** 0.368*** 0.0427
(0.075) (0.076) (0.065) (0.083) (0.068) (0.078) (0.090) (0.110)
Experience w/Chatbotsa 0.0291 0.042 0.0504 0.113 − 0.0353 0.00978 0.0461 − 0.00837
(0.066) (0.067) (0.057) (0.073) (0.060) (0.069) (0.079) (0.097)
Experience w/Human CSRa 0.0912 0.0445 0.0409 0.0268 0.0181 0.0627 0.043 − 0.241**
(0.063) (0.063) (0.054) (0.070) (0.057) (0.066) (0.075) (0.092)
Involvement 0.0917 0.0164 0.184* 0.0318 0.0636 0.00487 0.0526 0.332*
(0.104) (0.104) (0.089) (0.115) (0.093) (0.108) (0.124) (0.152)
Disp. Trust in People 0.0412 0.0623 0.0271 0.0464 0.0713 0.0848 0.0634 0.0876
(0.077) (0.078) (0.067) (0.086) (0.070) (0.081) (0.092) (0.113)
Constant 1.054 2.278** 1.817** 0.954 1.212 1.057 0.252 1.688
(0.703) (0.708) (0.606) (0.779) (0.633) (0.734) (0.837) (1.027)
adj. R2 0.281 0.214 0.284 0.277 0.332 0.328 0.295 0.083
F 12.85 9.234 13.01 12.62 16.05 15.77 13.68 3.754
p 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.001
N 213 213 213 213 213 213 213 213

5.3. Study 3
Finally, Study 3 evaluated two approaches to stimulating trust in
chatbots in order to achieve customer outcome parity with human ser­
vice. The first approach entailed priming situational trust in the chatbot
providing service. To test our hypothesis, we regressed our dependent
variables on the dummy variable labeled, HM_Service, which took the
value of one for the human-agent service condition and zero for chatbot
service. We show the results in Panel A of Table 5. While the coefficient
on the focal dummy was not statistically significant in four regressions,
it was significantly positive (at p < 0.05) in four other regressions
involving Satisfaction_Index, Service_Empathy, Service_Assurances, and
Repatronage. We note that this pattern of results makes intuitive sense, in
particular, the lack of impact on perceived empathy. On balance, our
data provide partial support for H5, which is framed as a non-inferiority
test. It posits that even when primed for high situational trust in the
chatbot service giver, individuals report worse outcomes compared with
equivalent service by a human agent. We find this to be true with respect
to half of our dependent variables. Reframing our results in a positive
light, one can, alternatively, state that priming particularized situational
trust in the chatbot service-giver helped to achieve non-inferiority with
human service on half of the outcome measures.
We next evaluated our second proposed approach to stimulating
trust in chatbot service. This approach involved comparing human ser­
vice with a chatbot-human combination primed for low or high situa­
tional trust. We estimated our regressions in two samples which
contained 212 and 203 valid observations, respectively. In both samples,
we regressed our battery of dependent variables on a dummy which took
the value of one if the reservation was handled by a human agent or
zero—by a chatbot-human service team.
Looking first at the results based on the sample that was primed for
low trust in Stella, we note that all the regressions are statistically sig­
nificant. However, the coefficient on the HM_Service dummy is signifi­
cantly positive in every regression (at p < 0.05 and lower). Thus, all the
evidence strongly supports the “inferiority” hypothesis H6a. Stated
differently, we find no evidence that a brief human intervention
following chatbot service can meaningfully improve customer outcomes
when consumers have low situational trust in the chatbot service-
provider.
Next considering the sample with high situational trust in the chatbot
Stella, we note that the coefficient on the HM_Service dummy is signifi­
cantly positive only in the regression of Service_Empathy, meaning that
human service outperformed the chatbot-human agent combination
only on that customer outcome. The dummy coefficient in the other
seven regressions is not statistically significant at p < 0.05. Although, we
note that the focal coefficient is marginally significant at p < 0.1 and
negative in the regression of Service_Efficiency, suggesting that the
chatbot-human agent combination borderline outperformed the human
service condition in terms of perceived service efficiency. These two
results align with the basic intuition that human agents will tend to score
higher on empathy in most circumstances, whereas chatbots are
generally associated with service efficiency. In sum, our data lead us to
reject the inferiority hypotheses H6b for seven out of our eight depen­
dent variables. Stated differently, these results largely support our
proposition that a chatbot-human-agent combination, as described in
this study, can match human-agent service on customer outcomes

10
D. Huang et al. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600

Table 5
Regressions of the customer outcome variables on the service provider type—human agent vs. chatbot/human agent—in the subsets with low or high situational trust
in the chatbot. These analyses are based on Study 3.
IVs/DVs = − 1 − 2 − 3 − 4 − 5 − 6 − 7 − 8

Sat_Index Serv_Efficiency Serv_Respons. Serv _Empathy Serv_Reliability Serv_Assurances Provider Loyalty Recomm_Accept

Panel A: HM vs. Chtabot w/High Trust

HM_Servicea 0.351* 0.0284 0.246 0.447* 0.153 0.373* 0.473* 0.218
(0.16) (0.18) (0.16) (0.18) (0.18) (0.18) (0.21) (0.27)
b
Experience w/Chatbots 0.0264 0.0603 0.0256 0.125 0.032 0.0695 0.0951 − 0.108
(0.06) (0.07) (0.06) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.08) (0.10)
b
Experience w/Human CSR − 0.00782 − 0.0559 − 0.0288 0.00376 − 0.0203 0.00996 − 0.0224 − 0.240*
(0.06) (0.07) (0.06) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.08) (0.10)
Involvement 0.0281 − 0.0303 0.0542 0.0596 0.0557 0.102 0.0128 − 0.0122
(0.07) (0.08) (0.07) (0.08) (0.08) (0.08) (0.10) (0.12)
Disp. Trust in People 0.169* 0.265** 0.201** 0.242** 0.265** 0.207* 0.208* 0.119
(0.08) (0.09) (0.07) (0.09) (0.08) (0.08) (0.10) (0.13)
adj. R2 0.037 0.028 0.042 0.079 0.042 0.066 0.036 0.026
F 2.541 2.14 2.77 4.451 2.766 3.853 2.498 2.062
p 0.0296 0.0624 0.0192 0.000731 0.0194 0.00237 0.0321 0.0718
N 202 202 202 202 202 202 202 202
Panel B: HM vs. Chatbot-HM w/Low Trust
HM_Service 0.618*** 0.376* 0.466** 0.965*** 0.566*** 0.969*** 0.776*** 0.522*
(0.15) (0.16) (0.14) (0.17) (0.17) (0.18) (0.20) (0.25)
Experience w/Chatbots 0.0389 − 0.034 − 0.0141 − 0.0561 − 0.0642 − 0.0704 0.0993 − 0.161
(0.06) (0.06) (0.06) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.08) (0.10)
Experience w/Human CSR − 0.0436 − 0.028 − 0.0148 0.0444 − 0.0511 − 0.0458 − 0.0728 − 0.194*
(0.06) (0.06) (0.05) (0.07) (0.06) (0.07) (0.08) (0.09)
Involvement 0.0547 0.0473 0.0731 0.151* 0.0584 0.115 0.164* − 0.0205
(0.06) (0.06) (0.05) (0.06) (0.06) (0.07) (0.08) (0.09)
Disp. Trust in People 0.331*** 0.353*** 0.281*** 0.295*** 0.384*** 0.391*** 0.347*** 0.0379
(0.07) (0.08) (0.07) (0.09) (0.08) (0.09) (0.10) (0.12)
adj. R2 0.163 0.105 0.125 0.204 0.145 0.219 0.156 0.043
F 9.195 5.94 7.022 11.78 8.128 12.85 8.813 2.889
p 6.48E-08 0.0000373 0.00000441 4.95E-10 0.000000508 6.97E-11 0.000000135 0.0152
N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212
Panel C: HM vs. Chatbot-HM w/High Trust
HM_Service − 0.0487 − 0.266 0.0968 0.443* − 0.0859 0.195 − 0.00616 0.232
(0.15) (0.16) (0.14) (0.17) (0.16) (0.16) (0.20) (0.26)
Experience w/Chatbots 0.0167 0.00363 − 0.00819 0.0353 − 0.0193 − 0.0318 0.0484 − 0.198
(0.06) (0.07) (0.06) (0.07) (0.07) (0.07) (0.08) (0.11)
Experience w/Human CSR 0.1 0.0916 0.0329 0.13 0.0444 0.0601 0.109 − 0.0391
(0.06) (0.06) (0.05) (0.07) (0.06) (0.06) (0.08) (0.10)
Involvement 0.101 0.116* 0.174*** 0.257*** 0.217*** 0.228*** 0.204** − 0.101
(0.05) (0.06) (0.05) (0.06) (0.06) (0.06) (0.07) (0.09)
Disp. Trust in People − 0.00372 0.0521 0.0674 0.105 0.108 0.0979 0.00896 − 0.00583
(0.07) (0.07) (0.06) (0.08) (0.07) (0.07) (0.09) (0.12)
adj. R2 0.024 0.035 0.069 0.168 0.08 0.103 0.052 0.015
F 1.996 2.458 3.983 9.134 4.501 5.618 3.207 1.611
p 0.0809 0.0347 0.00183 7.86E-08 0.00066 0.0000727 0.00832 0.159
N 203 203 203 203 203 203 203 203

Notes: All the regressions included a constant which is not shown.

Standard errors are in parentheses.
*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
a
HM_Service designates the human-agent service condition.
b
Experience with chatbots/human customer service representatives (CSR) in the previous two years.

provided the customers have situational trust in the chatbot.
6. Discussion, managerial implications, and conclusions
Technology analysts proclaim that chatbots are rapidly becoming “a
critical technology component of a service organization’s self-service
strategy” (Gartner, Inc. 2023). At the same time, industry surveys
reveal that consumers generally prefer service by human representa­
tives. We confirm this preference in our research setting. Compared with
equivalent service provided by a chatbot, our research participants re­
ported higher satisfaction with human customer service. They also
demonstrated greater provider repatronage intent and recommendation
acceptance after a service encounter with a human agent.
The tension between service providers’ chatbot adoption and con­
sumer hesitancy in accepting chatbot service presents a challenge for the
adopting organizations in the long run. Many companies and non-profits
strive for positive customer outcomes and marketing benefits which flow
from satisfied customers. Moreover, a reputation for superior customer
service can bestow a competitive advantage, as exemplified by com­
panies like Nordstrom’s and Apple (Garg, 2020). Hence,
customer-oriented organizations will likely seek ways to implement
chatbots, as well as supporting structures and activities, in a manner that
can help close the satisfaction gap between human and automated
customer service.
We draw on our trust framework to propose two chatbot service
configurations that may stimulate customer trust during a service
encounter and, thereby, help improve consumer experience with chat­
bot service. We empirically evaluate both approaches on their ability to
match human service on customer satisfaction, service agent’s recom­
mendation acceptance, and repatronage intentions. The first approach
entails priming situational trust in the chatbot service provider at the
point-of-service. We find this approach to be more effective than basic
chatbot service (without priming), although, falling short of human
service on half of the customer outcome measures used in our tests. Our

11
D. Huang et al.
second proposed approach combines situational trust priming, as in the
first approach, with a limited human intervention at the conclusion of a
service encounter which is handled by a chatbot. Adding a human
element is intended to further stimulate situational trust in a chatbot via
the halo effect, and also additively increase overall trust in the service
“team,” since consumers have higher dispositional and learned trust in
human service providers. Our empirical analysis shows that the second
approach is not only more effective than the first one, but it can also
match human service on the focal customer outcomes.
6.1. Managerial implications
Our experimental results corroborate industry surveys which point to
low consumer trust in chatbots as an impediment to chatbots’ wide­
spread consumer acceptance and continued use. The development of AI
chatbots’ problem-solving and relational capabilities is likely to provide
an effective solution to the trust conundrum in the long run. In the
interim, we contend that marketing interventions, such as trust priming,
and efficient chatbot-human service combinations may provide an
improvement on service configurations that solely feature live or chat­
bot agents.
To begin with, consumers vary in their preference for chatbot or
human service, as well as their dispositional and learned trust in chat­
bots. Hence, segmentation- and targeting-based approaches may present
a low-hanging fruit on the path to improving chatbot-driven customer
outcomes. For example, companies may leverage self-segmentation by
offering consumers a choice of chatbot or human service provider at the
point-of-service (possibly, with the option of changing at any time be­
tween the two, to facilitate chatbot acceptance). Further self-targeting
may be achieved by enabling different, even a-la-carte, configurations
within chatbot service offerings (e.g., different chatbot personas). Firms
that use chatbot service can also consider adding the trust variables as
additional inputs into their segmentation analysis.
Another promising chatbot implementation approach, which may be
combined with self-segmented offerings, includes taking steps to stim­
ulate particularized situational trust in the chatbot service-giver. This
would include careful orchestration of contextual cues that can enhance
consumer confidence in the chatbot’s abilities (e.g., based on its success
rate), honesty and benevolence. Conceptually and ethically, this would
not be different from the existing practice of human service providers
displaying in their offices and on their marketing materials their degree
diplomas, testimonials, and prominent endorsements. We note that,
while this approach was not completely on a par with human service in
our tests, it is very low-costand can be further enhanced using sophis­
ticated priming instruments.
However, the most promising and best-performing chatbot configu­
ration in our tests involved combining a chatbot in the primary service
role with a human agent in a supporting role. This approach naturally
instills higher trust in the service team, although it performs better when
combined with a prime to enhance situational trust in the chatbot. To
the extent that a human agent can step in following the conclusion of a
service encounter, for example, for quality control and reassurance, the
operating cost of such configuration may be only marginally higher than
that of fully automated service. To reduce costs further, it can be
selectively applied to non-routine service encounters.
We believe that the outlined chatbot-human implementation with a
situational trust prime represents a reasonable path towards both more
efficient and effective customer service that has many of the advantages
of chatbot and human agents, while requiring acceptable trade-offs.
Although it may be somewhat more expensive than full automation,
and poses scaling challenges to incorporate the human element, it
promises superior customer satisfaction and important marketing ben­
efits, including incremental sales. If nothing else, the proposed config­
uration may serve as a functional bridge towards full automation in the
future when consumers can be served by virtual agents endowed with
high general and emotional intelligence (Prentice, 2019; Prentice et al.,
12
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 76 (2024) 103600
2019).
Finally, companies should consider sponsoring industry-wide ini­
tiatives that can directly stimulate chatbot acceptance. In particular,
developing learned trust in chatbot service provision can have a positive
impact on important customer outcomes. While experience-based
learned trust will grow organically over time, as consumers are
increasingly served by evolving virtual agents, the process may be
further accelerated by stimulating other common learning routes, such
as using trade association communications and public relations to
educate consumers on the inner workings, safety, integrity, benevo­
lence, and successes of service chatbots.
6.2. Theoretical implications
This current research builds on previous research on trust in service
technologies (i.e. Mayer et al., 1995; Glikson and Woolley, 2020). It is
unique in that it combines theoretical lenses from marketing (i.e. Auh,
2005), information systems (i.e. McKnight et al., 2011) and human
factors research (i.e. Hoff and Bashir, 2015), which allows us to develop
new approaches and insights. We propose a novel theoretical framework
focusing on the role of trust in AI service encounters. We use the
framework to generate empirical evidence showing different outcomes
involving consumer response to chatbot service based on the interplay of
three distinct layers of trust: dispositional, learned and situational (i.e.
Marsh and Dibben, 2003). Hence, our research advances the trust
literature by proposing a model of trust that is specifically adapted to
consumer interactions with chatbots. Another important theoretical
distinction of our framework is in presenting a dynamic view of trust
which accounts for changes in consumer trust over time. This opens new
avenues for research into temporal aspects of trust, in contrast to the
prevalent approaches to trust that focus on trustee attributes, such as
confidence, integrity, reliability, and benevolence.
Further, our research provides insights into the process of trust for­
mation and elucidates the relationships between the focal trust layers. At
the most fundamental level, one’s interactions with chatbots are shaped
by the extent of one’s propensity to trust service technologies—an
assumption that these technologies are largely benign, beneficial, and
reliable. Over time, positive experiences with customer service chatbots
and other learning behaviors stimulate the development of generalized
learned trust in chatbots (i.e. Kong et al., 2020). In addition, during
service encounters with a chatbot, consumers may be exposed to
contextual cues highlighting the chatbot’s capabilities, track record, or
performance guarantees (i.e. Chinchanachokchai et al., 2021). These
cues motivate particularized situational trust in the specific chatbot
service-giver.
Our empirical investigation confirms that these trust layers impact
consumer experience with chatbots. To our knowledge we are the first to
provide empirical evidence that all three trust layers have a direct effect
on customer satisfaction with chatbot service and subsequent trusting
behaviors, including recommendation acceptance and repatronage in­
tentions. Dispositional trust in service technologies, in particular, was
found to play a central role by mediating the effect of learned trust in
chatbots. This result conforms with the theoretical prediction that “ob­
servations are theory-laden” (Govier, 1994, p. 244) and trust propensity
continues to impact one’s trusting behavior even in the presence of
established trust.
6.3. Limitations and future research
Our research includes some limitations. First, while we designed our
studies in such a way to limit potential confounds, we acknowledge that
there are additional variables which may influence the perception of the
chatbot. For example, although we collected some demographic vari­
ables in our studies (i.e., gender and age), and verified that our results
are robust to their inclusion into the regression models, we did not have
information on other additional socio-demographic variables such as
D. Huang et al.
income, education and occupation. Culture is another dimension for
which we did not have control. Given that culture is not a typical control
variable in the literature, we leave it to further investigation on specific
service contexts.
Additionally, the demographics (race, age and gender) of the tour
guides and service providers may have influenced the participants. Since
the tour guide pictures and the chatbot avatar were the same across
conditions (Web Appendix B), it is unlikely that any effects would in­
fluence the results. However, future research should consider comparing
different demographics between conditions, and consider the possibility
of gender influence.
Next, consumers sometimes have a choice between using a chatbot
immediately or queueing up for a human agent. This was not an option
in our study. We believe our setting is commonplace in this regard. At
the same time, we recognize that enabling the choice of a service-giver
may affect one’s subsequent experiences. Since that various chatbot
service options are possible, as discussed in the preceding section, it
would be instructive for future research to examine consumer trust
patterns and related experiences in light of the distinct paths that con­
sumers may take leading up to their service encounter.
In the same vein, we contextualize this research in diverse customer
service applications that entail service provided by human and chatbot
agents via online chat. The degree to which our recommendations may
extend to face-to-face service contexts (e.g., involving humanoid ro­
bots), or voice-based interactions, which, both, enable a distinct set of
cues and limitations would need to be established in future research.
Another future research direction would be to explore the boundary
conditions for chatbot service acceptance. For example, we pursue our
research questions in a rather general setting that embeds moderate
level of risk, and focuses on a mostly positive consumer experi­
ence—making a travel reservation. However, consumers often contact
customer service with a problem (e.g., a missed flight, a product mal­
function, a return, a missing package, etc.). While our framework and
recommendations generalize to chatbot service experiences in such
settings, further empirical research in distinct settings is warranted.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2023.103600.
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