What happens after the arrival of service robots? Investigating how robotic usage experience facilitates employees’ exploitative and exploratory learning behaviors

Abstract

Service robots have been widely introduced into the hospitality industry and are being extensively utilized. Most existing research has focused on the customer perspective and explored the antecedents of robotic usage experience, leaving the mechanisms of its work-related consequences unclear. This research provides a causal framework for understanding the relationship between robotic usage experience and employee learning behaviors. Through an online scenario-based experiment and a field survey, the results indicated that the robotic usage experience significantly increases employees’ exploitative and exploratory learning behaviors. Workplace inspiration plays a partial mediating role between them. Moreover, employees’ learning goal orientation positively moderates the relationship between robotic usage experience and workplace inspiration. When employees have a higher learning goal orientation, the impact of robotic usage experience on workplace inspiration becomes stronger. The findings can effectively guide employees to utilize robotic usage experience to promote their learning behaviors, thereby enhancing organizational innovation and competitiveness.