When robot appearance and service style interact to influence customers’ willingness to pay: The mediating role of perceived restaurant quality

Abstract

Incorporating robotics into the service industry fundamentally shifts how hospitality businesses operate and interact with their customers. While there is a growing interest in understanding consumer responses to humanoid (vs. non-humanoid) robots, the potential interaction effects between robot and restaurant characteristics, along with the mechanisms underlying these relationships, have rarely been examined. Grounded in the schema incongruity theory, a mediated moderation model was developed to test the interactive effect of robot appearance and restaurant service style on customers’ willingness to pay (WTP) through perceived restaurant quality. The results yielded by four experiments confirmed that the use of mechanical/machine-like robots in full-service restaurants decreases consumers’ WTP due to perceived low food quality. On the other hand, the use of human-like robots in quick-service restaurants decreases consumers’ WTP due to perceived low service quality. These findings enrich the hospitality literature on service robots and provide crucial insights for restaurateurs planning to invest in this emerging technology.