Heterogeneity of Attitudes toward Robots in Healthcare among the Chinese Public: A Latent Profile Analysis

Xuanyi Bi, Yu Gao, Erhong Sun, Yan Yan, Yimin Zhou and Xuchun Ye ()
Additional contact information
Xuanyi Bi: Department of Nursing, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
Yu Gao: Department of Nursing, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
Erhong Sun: Department of Nursing, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
Yan Yan: Department of Nursing, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
Yimin Zhou: Department of Nursing, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China
Xuchun Ye: Department of Nursing, Naval Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 20, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Attitudes are deemed critical psychological variables that can determine end users’ acceptance and adoption of robots. This study explored the heterogeneity of the Chinese public’s attitudes toward robots in healthcare and examined demographic characteristics associated with the derived profile membership. The data were collected from a sample of 428 Chinese who participated in an online survey. Latent profile analysis identified three distinct subgroups regarding attitudes toward robots—optimistic (36.9%), neutral (47.2%), and ambivalent (15.9%). Interestingly, although participants in the ambivalent attitude profile held more negative attitudes toward interaction with or social influence of healthcare robots, their attitudes tended to be positive when it came to emotional interactions with healthcare robots. All the respondents reported negative attitudes toward the social influence of healthcare robots. Multivariable regression analysis results showed that there were significant differences in age, education level, monthly income, experience with computers, experience with wearable devices, and whether to follow robot-related news or not. This study confirmed the heterogeneity of the Chinese public’s attitudes toward robots in healthcare and highlighted the importance of emotional interaction with and social influence of healthcare robots, which might facilitate a better understanding of the needs and expectations of potential end users for robots in healthcare to make them more acceptable in different situations.

Keywords: robot; attitude; healthcare; cross-sectional study; latent profile analysis; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/508/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/1/508/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2022:i:1:p:508-:d:1017927

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().