Should the doctor smile at me? The impact and mechanism of the service avatar's smile display and realism on the customer's self-disclosure in healthcare consultation services

Abstract

Enhancing customers' self-disclosure is crucial in online medical and health services. Although avatar technology is frequently used in the medical service context, it remains an open question about whether avatar technology can enhance customers' self-disclosure. Using both field experiments and lab experiments, this paper investigates how an avatar's smiling display and avatar realism jointly affect customers' self-disclosure. This paper shows that high-realism avatars displaying (vs. not displaying) smiles in online medical and health services decrease customers' perceived trust in the service provider, and consequently reduce their willingness to self-disclose. Conversely, low-realism avatars displaying (vs. not displaying) smiles enhance customers' perceived enjoyment, and consequently increase their willingness to self-disclose. Theoretically, this paper introduces an innovative adjustment perspective to explain how an avatar's smile and realism jointly affect customers' responses to the medical service. This paper also provides new antecedents of customers' self-disclosure. Practically, it has rich implications for how medical service providers customize (either standardized or personalized) their avatars' images and behaviors.