Pseudo-eating behavior of service robot to improve the trustworthiness of product recommendations

Abstract

Service robots are used in a range of service situations, including those where they are required to recommend products. However, when robots use subjective statements for product recommendations, users may not place sufficient trust in the robot's recommendations which may degrade its recommendation capability. This study proposes a method to improve the perceived trustworthiness of the robot's subjective statements and thus promote the user's food purchase behavior. The proposed recommendation method involves explicitly sharing the robot's experience with the user and improving the perceived trustworthiness of the robot's subjective statements by performing a pseudo-eating behavior. The results of two online surveys show that the robot's statements and recommendations accompanied by the pseudo-eating behavior improved the trust in the robot's subjective statement and consequently, the user's willingness to purchase products. Further, the results of a field experiment in a real bakery store showed that the proposed method is comparable to recommendation methods proposed in previous works. The results obtained through the online surveys and the field experiment indicate that robots are trusted even when they express subjective statements for recommendations by explicitly sharing the experience with the user.