 Exploring the ethical use of LLM chatbots in higher educationGustave Florentin Nkoulou Mvondo, Ben Niu and Salman Eivazinezhad Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 200, issue C Abstract: The rise of LLM chatbots has created complex gray areas regarding plagiarism, blurring the once-clear boundaries between original creation and derivation. This has raised significant concerns about academic integrity in higher education, with reports indicating that students are misusing these tools for academic assignments. However, research on the factors that can promote ethical use remains limited. Grounded in social cognitive and rational choice theories, we propose a model that integrates environmental factors (ethical climate and ethical supervision), personal factors (moral consciousness and ethical chatbot self-efficacy), a technological factor (awareness of chatbot usage policies), and risk factors (AI writing detection probability and sanction severity). We collected data from 703 US students and analyzed the sample using PLS-SEM and fsQCA. The findings reveal that all hypothesized relationships, except for awareness of chatbot usage policies, are supported. Additionally, fsQCA identifies three configurations associated with high and low ethical use. Keywords: Ethical climate; Ethical supervision; Moral consciousness; Ethical chatbot self-efficacy; LLM chatbot; AI plagiarism (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:200:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325003984 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115575 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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