The Effect of Structural Equation Modeling on Chatbot Usage: An Investigation of Dialogflow

Abstract

This study aims to understand users' perceptions of using the Dialogflow framework and verify the relationships among service awareness, task-technology fit, output quality, and TAM variables. Generalized Structured Component Analysis was employed to experiment with six hypotheses. Two hundred twenty-seven participants were recruited through the purposive non-random sampling technique. Google Forms was utilized as a medium to develop and distribute survey questionnaires to subjects of interest. The experimental results indicated that perceived ease of use and usefulness had a statistically significant and positive influence on behavioral intention. Awareness of service and output quality was considered reliable predictors of perceived usefulness. Also, perceived task-technology fit positively affected perceived ease of use. The model specification accounted for 50.04% of the total variation. The findings can be leveraged to reinforce TAM in future research in a comparative academic context to validate the hypothesis. Several practitioner recommendations and the study's limitations have been presented.