Assessing Factors Influencing Customers’ Adoption of AI-Based Voice Assistants

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study aims to assess the factors that engage and accentuate usage pertaining to consumers with artificial intelligence-based voice assistants. Drawing on the Behavioral Reasoning Theory (BRT), the paper establishes relationships between the enablers and inhibitors on the adoption intention of voice assistants. To examine the hypothesized relationship, a quantitative approach employing PLS-SEM was utilized to evaluate a representative sample of 1189 Indian consumers and examining the psychological and functional constructs leading to adoption intention for voice assistants. The study reveals that the “value of openness to change” poses a significant effect toward “reasons for” adoption, among which “performance expectancy” and “hedonic motivation” play the most significant role in establishing a favorable attitude toward voice assistants’ adoption. Among the “reasons against”, the “value barrier” and “image barrier” come out to be major determinants leading to inhibitions regarding the usage of voice assistants. Besides this, the findings reclaim that “reasons” (for/against) shape to form the attitude of consumers toward voice assistants. The current research offers preliminary evidence with regard to the investigation of voice assistant adoption using the BRT that jointly examines enabling and inhibiting elements leading to consumers’ attitude formation. The study findings contribute to Human-Computer interaction literature by utilizing BRT framework which provides incremental evidence demonstrating a much broader and organic explanation of consumers’ cognition for the adoption of voice assistant technology. It also provides implications for tech-managers and algorithm designers to build effective voice technology for superior user experience.