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How Human–Chatbot Interaction Impairs Charitable Giving: The Role of Moral Judgment

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Abstract

Interactions between human beings and chatbots are gradually becoming part of our everyday social lives. It is still unclear how human–chatbot interactions (HCIs), compared to human–human interactions (HHIs), influence individual morality. Building on the dual-process theory of moral judgment, a secondary data analysis (Study 1), and two scenario-based experiments (Studies 2 and 3) provide sufficient evidence that HCIs (vs. HHIs) support utilitarian judgments (vs. deontological judgments), which reduce participants' donation amount. Study 3 further demonstrates that the negative effects of HCIs can be attenuated by inducing a social-oriented (vs. task-oriented) communication style in chatbots’ verbal language designs. These findings highlight the negative impacts of HCIs on relationships among human beings and suggest a practical intervention for nonprofit organization managers.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project Nos. 71672069, 71972079, 71772074 and 72072152) and the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong SAR (CityU 11502218) for financial support.

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  1. School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Yuanyuan Zhou, Zhuoying Fei & Yuanqiong He

  2. College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Zhilin Yang

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Zhou, Y., Fei, Z., He, Y. et al. How Human–Chatbot Interaction Impairs Charitable Giving: The Role of Moral Judgment. J Bus Ethics 178, 849–865 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05045-w

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