The Effect of COVID-19 on Airline Transportation Services: A Study on Service Robot Usage Intention

Ieva Meidute-Kavaliauskiene, Bülent Yıldız, Şemsettin Çiğdem and Renata Činčikaitė
Additional contact information
Ieva Meidute-Kavaliauskiene: General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania, 10332 Vilnius, Lithuania
Bülent Yıldız: Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Kastamonu University, Kastamonu 37150, Turkey
Şemsettin Çiğdem: Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Gaziantep University, Gaziantep 27310, Turkey
Renata Činčikaitė: General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania, 10332 Vilnius, Lithuania

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 22, 1-19

Abstract: Robots have started to be used in the service sector as well as in the manufacturing industry. The use of service robots in airport services, tourism, and hospital services also brings many advantages. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing physical contact and providing hygiene are essential benefits of service robots. For this purpose, the effect of COVID-19 fear on perceived trust in service robots and the intention to use them at airports was investigated in this study. For analysis, data were collected from 730 participants from 64 different countries, by questionnaire. The data were analyzed with the SPSS and AMOS package programs. As a result of the structural equation model analysis, it was determined that COVID-19 fear affects perceived trust in service robots and the intention to use them positively, and perceived trust also affects the intention to use service robots positively. In addition, as a result of the Process Macro analysis, it was found that perceived trust has a high mediating effect on the effect of COVID-19 fear on the intention to use. The research results show that people’s attitudes towards COVID-19 shape the perception of robot usage in air transport services.

Keywords: COVID-19 fear; service robots; airport services; perceived trust; intention to use (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12571/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/22/12571/ (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:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:22:p:12571-:d:678951

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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