Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly integrated aspect of daily life. Particularly, businesses have been incorporating AI into many of their features from customer support to product personalization. While there has been a body of research exploring the interpersonal impacts of AI and human participants, there is limited research on the effects of human-like AI on its influence in the purchasing process. Taking the theoretical framework of the Computer Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm, I utilized a 2 x 3 experiment to measure if the perceived sex of an artificial intelligence impacts consumers' purchase intention, trust, and sense of agency. Participants interacted with either a male-gendered or female-gendered AI chatbot, or a static website, which then recommended a water bottle based on the participants' preferences. The study indicated significance with both male and female participants preferring the control website over both AI sexes. The study also indicated significance in women participants feeling more overall agency than men participants during the experiment. The results indicate a potential need for a new level of human realism before CASA can be framed within some AI applications. / MACOM / Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly integrated aspect of daily life. Particularly, businesses have been incorporating AI into many of their features from customer support to product personalization. While there has been a body of research exploring the interpersonal impacts of AI and human participants, there is limited research on the effects of human-like AI on its influence in the purchasing process. Taking the concept that people naturally treat human-like technology as real humans, I have evaluated whether consumers' purchase intention, trust, and sense of agency are impacted while interacting with either a male-gendered or female-gendered AI chatbot , or a static website, which then recommended a water bottle based on the participants' preferences. The study showed that both male and female participants preferred the control website over both AI sexes, and women participants overall felt more agency than men participants during the experiment. The results indicate that there may need to be a new level of human realism before users will treat some AI applications as fellow humans.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115945 |
| Date | 28 July 2023 |
| Creators | Cole, Jared Lee |
| Contributors | Communication, Horning, Michael A., Holz, Adrienne, Tedesco, John C. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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