People’s Attitudes Towards the Use of Robots in the Social Services: A Multilevel Analysis Using Eurobarometer Data

Abstract

Robots have been employed in the industrial sectors for over half a century; however, their appearance in the domestic sphere is a modern phenomenon, occurring in just the last decade. These so-called social robots are carrying out a variety of tasks traditionally carried out by humans, and in contexts in which they must interact with human beings. These kinds of social robots are now being used in the welfare services, providing assistive services and companionship for the infirm or elderly, and even children. Thus, the use of social robots in everyday life has triggered an animated debate about the acceptance of these devices by their end users. In this paper, multilevel analysis is applied using data from the Eurobarometer survey (sample size 27,901, covering 28 countries) to investigate how socio-demographic characteristics and country-level indicators of technological and economic development (the rate of high-technology manufactured exports, the cellular phone subscriptions rate and GDP) influence how robots are accepted in the realm of the social services. The results show that only individual (socio-demographic) and technology acceptance model (TAM) factors influence attitudes towards social robots. The effects of the contextual variables considered were not statistically strong enough to explain the attitudes towards social robots for social services.