The Robot Rights and Responsibilities Scale: Development and Validation of a Metric for Understanding Perceptions of Robots’ Rights and Responsibilities

Abstract

The discussion and debates surrounding the robot rights topic demonstrate vast differences in the possible philosophical, ethical, and legal approaches to this question. Without top-down guidance of mutually agreed upon legal and moral imperatives, the public’s attitudes should be an important component of the discussion. However, few studies have been conducted on how the general population views aspects of robot rights. The aim of the current study is to provide a new measurement that may facilitate such research. A Robot Rights and Responsibilities (RRR) scale is developed and tested. An exploratory factor analysis reveals a multi-dimensional construct with three factors—robots’ rights, responsibilities, and capabilities—which are found to concur with theoretically relevant metrics. The RRR scale is contextualized in the ongoing discourse about the legal and moral standing of non-human and artificial entities. Implications for people’s ontological perceptions of machines and suggestions for future empirical research are considered.