Organizing the Internet of Robotic Things: The Effect of Organization Structure on Users’ Evaluation and Compliance toward IoRT Service Platform

Abstract

As robots and robotic things become to have more agency, IoRT which consists of robots and robotic things can be considered as a social organization. Accordingly, social organization structure of IoRT could affect users’ behavior and perception of IoRT. In this study, in order to examine the effect of social organization structure on people’s acceptance of IoRT, we conducted a 2 (social organization structure: flat vs. hierarchical) within-participants experiment (N=30). In the experiment, a participant was asked to take part in cooking task with the aid of a robot, a robotic measuring cup, and a robotic mixer. We executed a post-experimental survey and counted the duration of participants’ following the instruction given by the platform. People gave higher scores of trustworthiness and purchase intention to the platform with flat organization structure than that with hierarchical one. On the contrary, participants were more compliant with the hierarchical IoRT service platform than a flat one. Implications for the theory and design of IoRT are discussed.