 When does anthropomorphism hurt? How tool anthropomorphism negatively affects consumers' rewards for tool usersJingya Huang, Liangyan Wang and Eugene Chan Journal of Business Research, 2024, vol. 170, issue C Abstract: The current work explores how tool anthropomorphism adversely affects people’s rewards for tool users. This effect arises because tool anthropomorphism decreases perceived effort of tool users as people see tool users to be exerting less effort with some of the effort picked up by the anthropomorphized tools. Study 1 adopts a context of a national city-cleaning activity to verify the main effect in the form of prosocial behaviors. Study 2 replicates the main effect in a consumption context for monetary reward (i.e., tips). Study 3 reveals the underlying mechanism of perceived effort and rules out the alternative explanation of perspective-taking. Study 4 verifies the mediating role of perceived effort by manipulating tool users’ effort as explicitly mentioned (or not). Finally, Study 5 shows the moderating role of just world belief. Our findings are robust across various contexts and provide novel theoretical and practical implications. Keywords: Tool anthropomorphism; Negative effect; Perceived effort; Just world belief (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:170:y:2024:i:c:s0148296323007142 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114355 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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