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How the elderly tackle age discrimination from human or AI servers

Guangmei Jia, Xiaoyan Luo and Lisa C. Wan

Annals of Tourism Research, 2025, vol. 113, issue C

Abstract: Although the rapid expansion of digital services in the tourism and hospitality industry has highlighted instances of age discrimination perpetuated by artificial intelligence (AI), a significant research gap remains regarding how senior visitors respond to such discrimination. This study employs a mixed-methods approach to compare the reactions of senior tourists to age discrimination originating from AI versus human servers. The results showed that both human- and AI-driven discrimination reduced senior tourists' purchase likelihood compared to non-discriminatory scenarios. However, older tourists reacted less negatively to AI-driven (vs. human-driven) discrimination, which posed a smaller threat to their age-related self-worth. This effect was observed only when in-group customers (e.g., older customers) were present, but not when out-group customers (e.g., younger customers) were present.

Keywords: Age discrimination; Artificial intelligence; Purchase likelihood; Threat to age-contingent self-worth; The presence of other customer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:113:y:2025:i:c:s0160738325000817

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2025.103975

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