Overcoming customer innovation resistance to the sustainable adoption of chatbot services: A community-enterprise perspective in Thailand

Abstract

The primary goal of utilizing chatbots for customer service is to fulfill customer requests without requiring a conversation. However, the challenge to the sustainable adoption of innovations is overcoming the obstacles that prevent the innovation's spread. The current study examined factors including consumers' perceptions, barriers and perceived risks that influence consumers' intentions to continue utilizing chatbot services in community enterprise. Modeling integrates the innovation-decision process in Phase 1 (knowledge, persuasion, and decision) with the technology acceptance model (TAM), perceived convenience and information quality. We also consider technological anxiety and openness to experience as potential barriers to individual innovation. The research model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) from 401 users with no more than 6 months of community-enterprise chatbot experience. Key findings that perceived privacy and time risk directly affected attitudes and intentions toward using chatbots. Moreover, technological anxiety is a barrier that affects attitudes toward chatbot usage, while perceived information quality indirectly influences users to use chatbots continually. However, there was no correlation between openness to experience and attitudes toward the continued use of chatbots. The finding indicates that experienced chatbot users are concerned with privacy and time constraints. This study contributes significantly to knowledge of the impediments to the diffusion of sustainable innovations among community-enterprise entrepreneurs.