Abstract
Applications of chatbots are becoming more diverse. One application that is specifically interesting is social chatbots, as they are designed to provide its users with social support and improve wellbeing and mental health outcomes. It is questionable to what extent social chatbots are successful support providers, as there are several differences between chatbots and humans. Given the diverse subconcepts of social support, this paper aims to evaluate to what extent relevant subconcepts (structural support, perceived support, received support, and support adequacy) are captivated in extant research on social chatbots, in order to draw conclusions about its potential. Support adequacy turned out to be most under scrutiny in extant research, while measures of structural support and received support received less attention. Surprisingly, directionality of support was another important subconcept of social support in social chatbot literature. Theoretical and practical implications as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.
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