Interactive Applications with Artificial Intelligence: The Role of Trust among Digital Assistant Users

Abstract

People are increasingly dependent on technology. On the other hand, companies’ large-scale investments to establish an ongoing loyalty with technology platforms and ecosystems show negative results. This is due to lower trust, concerns about risk, and increasing issues of privacy. Despite the continuous development of digital assistant applications to increase interactivity, however, there is no guarantee that the concept of interactivity is capable of gaining users’ trust and addressing their concerns. The purpose of the present study was to analyze the effects of controllability, synchronicity, bidirectionality on perceived performance and user satisfaction with digital assistant applications as moderated by perceived trust. Amos 22.0 was used to analyze a sample of 150 digital assistant users of brands Samsung Bixby, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and other brands. Results show that bidirectionality is the most worrying feature in terms of perceived performance of digital assistants related to trust and privacy protection issues of personal data, whereas the other two features contribute to perceived performance and digital assistant users’ satisfaction. Perceived trust plays a role in moderating the relationship between controllability, synchronicity bi-directionality of perceived performance. Finally, perceived performance has an effect on digital assistant users’ satisfaction.