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Working Together with Conversational Agents: The Relationship of Perceived Cooperation with Service Performance Evaluations

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Chatbot Research and Design (CONVERSATIONS 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11970))

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Abstract

Conversational agents are gradually being deployed by organizations in service settings to communicate with and solve problems together with consumers. The current study investigates how consumers’ perceptions of cooperation with conversational agents in a service context are associated with their perceptions about agents’ anthropomorphism, social presence, the quality of the information provided by an agent, and the agent service performance. An online experiment was conducted in which participants performed a service-oriented task with the assistance of conversational agents developed specifically for the study and evaluated the performance and attributes of the agents. The results suggest a direct positive link between perceiving a conversational agent as cooperative and perceiving it to be more anthropomorphic, with higher levels of social presence and providing better information quality. Moreover, the results also show that the link between perceiving an agent as cooperative and the agent’s service performance is mediated by perceptions of the agent’s anthropomorphic cues and the quality of the information provided by the agent.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, 62 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB, UK

    Guy Laban

  2. Gradute School of Communication, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 166, 1018 WV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Guy Laban

  3. Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 15793, 1001 NG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Theo Araujo

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  1. Guy Laban
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Correspondence to Guy Laban .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SINTEF, Oslo, Norway

    Asbjørn Følstad

  2. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Theo Araujo

  3. CERTH-ITI, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Symeon Papadopoulos

  4. University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Effie Lai-Chong Law

  5. University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway

    Ole-Christoffer Granmo

  6. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Ewa Luger

  7. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Petter Bae Brandtzaeg

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Laban, G., Araujo, T. (2020). Working Together with Conversational Agents: The Relationship of Perceived Cooperation with Service Performance Evaluations. In: Følstad, A., et al. Chatbot Research and Design. CONVERSATIONS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11970. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39540-7_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39540-7_15

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39539-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39540-7

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