The role of recommendation sources and attribute framing in online product recommendations

Abstract

As artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly incorporated into online product recommendations (OPRs), investigating how an AI recommendation source influences consumer behavior has attracted widespread attention among scholars. Across five studies, this paper empirically examines the effect of the AI (vs. human) recommendation source on consumer responses from the perspective of vice and virtue frame products. The results show that when OPRs frame products as vice (vs. virtue), the AI (vs. human) recommendation source has negative effects on perceived warmth and competence (Study 2a) and eventually negatively influences purchase intention (Studies 1a and 2a), willingness to pay (Study 1b), and product attitude (Study 2b). However, humanized AI and AI-human hybrid improve the acceptance intention of vice frame product recommendations through different improvement paths (Study 3). This paper extends the research stream on the comparison of AI and humans and contributes to the literature on social perception, humanized intelligence, and augmented intelligence.