AI-enabled investment advice: Will users buy it?

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to develop and empirically validate a conceptual model that explains individuals' behavioral intention to accept AI-based recommendations as a function of attitude toward AI, trust, perceived accuracy and uncertainty level. The conceptual model was tested through a between-participants experiment using a simulated AI-enabled investment recommendation system. A total of 368 participants were randomly and evenly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions, one depicting low-uncertainty investment recommendation involving blue-chip stocks while the other depicting high-uncertainty investment recommendation involving penny stocks. Results show that attitude toward AI was positively associated with behavioral intention to accept AI-based recommendations, trust in AI, and perceived accuracy of AI. Furthermore, uncertainty level moderated how attitude, trust and perceived accuracy varied with behavioral intention to accept AI-based recommendations. When uncertainty was low, a favorable attitude toward AI seemed sufficient to promote reliance on automation. However, when uncertainty was high, a favorable attitude toward AI was a necessary but no longer sufficient condition for AI acceptance. Thus, the paper contributes to the human-AI interaction literature by not only shedding light on the underlying psychological mechanism of how users decide to accept AI-enabled advice but also adding to the scholarly understanding of AI recommendation systems in tasks that call for intuition in high involvement services.