Research on Empathic Remediation Mechanism of Chatbots Mediated by Social Presence and Trust

Abstract

Chatbots are changing the way consumers interact with businesses. However, chatbots continue to be widely perceived to lack a human touch and inevitably fail to deliver service. This paper argues that emerging research on AI empathy will address the lack of human touch in chatbots and provide new ideas for remedying chatbots service. By combing research from different disciplines, we argue that the connotations of chatbots empathy can be understood through a three-tier structure of transpersonal thinking, empathic care, and emotional empathy. Additionally, we find that chatbots empathy contains three dimensions: cognitive empathy, emotional empathy and behavioral empathy. These three dimensions are not mutually exclusive but rather complement each other to form the overall empathy capacity of chatbots. Based on the mediating mechanisms of social presence and trust and the moderating mechanism of technology readiness, we summarize a framework for the impact of chatbots empathy on consumers' willingness to forgive. This paper can further enrich the research on chatbots service remediation and improve companies' understanding and use of empathic remediation.