What Drives Hospitality Employees’ Trust in Service Robots?

Minkyung Park (), Diamond A. Andress, Jae Hyup Chang, Andy Lee and Chung Hun Lee ()
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Minkyung Park: School of Sport, Recreation, and Tourism Management, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, 4D2, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
Diamond A. Andress: International Education, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, 4D2, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
Jae Hyup Chang: Department of Tourism Management, Kongju National University, 56 Gongjudaehak-ro, Gongju-si 32588, Chungcheongnam-do, Republic of Korea
Andy Lee: Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
Chung Hun Lee: Tourism Innovation Lab, Department of Hotel and Tourism Management, Sejong University, Seoul 05006, Republic of Korea

Tourism and Hospitality, 2025, vol. 6, issue 5, 1-24

Abstract: As service robots become more prevalent in hospitality settings, understanding what shapes employees’ trust in these technologies is essential for fostering effective human–robot collaboration. Despite extensive research on customer trust and robot-related attributes, employee perspectives have received limited and fragmented attention. The aim of this study is to examine how human, robot, and organizational factors collectively influence employees’ trust in service robots, thereby offering a more comprehensive understanding of trust formation in hospitality contexts. To address this aim, this study adopts a three-dimensional trust framework (human, robot, and organizational factors) and provides the first comprehensive empirical test in the hospitality sector. Drawing on survey data from 301 frontline hospitality workers in the United States, we investigated how various human-, robot-, and organization-related factors influence employees’ trust in service robots using bootstrap multiple regression analysis. The results reveal that human factors, particularly employees’ attitudes toward and comfort with robots, emerged as dominant trust predictors. Surprisingly, organizational factors showed minimal direct impact, suggesting complex trust dynamics unique to hospitality contexts. These findings significantly expand existing human–robot interaction (HRI) theory and offer critical practical insights for hospitality managers integrating robots into frontline service.

Keywords: employee trust; service robots; human-robot interaction; human-related factors; robot-related factors; organization-related factors; human-robot collaboration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z3 Z30 Z31 Z32 Z33 Z38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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