Tourists and AI: A political ideology perspective

Patrick van Esch, Cui, Yuanyuan (Gina), Gopal Das, Shailendra Pratap Jain and Jochen Wirtz

Annals of Tourism Research, 2022, vol. 97, issue C

Abstract: The tourism industry has adopted AI agents as substitutes for human contact. We examine how tourists respond to AI in hotel service settings during a pandemic. Four studies show that services featuring human interaction is preferred to AI enabled interaction. Moreover, subjective happiness is identified as the underlying causal mechanism that drives this effect. We provide further nuanced insights by showing that politically conservative tourists discriminate between service agent types more. Theoretically we contribute to a more fine-grained understanding of tourists' responses towards AI by examining an affective and an individual difference factor (political ideology). Practically, marketers are encouraged to incorporate tourists' ideologies and psychographics into segmentation, targeting, and positioning considerations, thereby enhancing their marketing effectiveness.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; AI; Liberal-conservative; Political ideology; Service robots; Subjective happiness; Tourists (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:anture:v:97:y:2022:i:c:s0160738322001220

DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2022.103471

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