Low Social Presence Research Articles

Perceptive Recommendation Robot: Enhancing Receptivity of Product Suggestions Based on Customers' Nonverbal Cues.

Service robots that coexist with humans in everyday life have become more common, and they have provided customer service in physical shops around the world in recent years. However, their potential in effective sales strategies has not been fully realized due to their low social presence. This study aims to clarify what kind of robot behavior enhances the social presence of service robots and how it affects human-robot interaction and purchasing behavior. We conducted two experiments with a sales robot, Pepper, at a retail shop in Kyoto. In Experiment 1, we showed that the robot's social presence increased and that customers looked at the robot longer when the robot understood human gaze information and was capable of shared attention. In Experiment 2, we showed that the probability of customers picking up products increased when the robot suggested products based on the humans' degree of attention from gaze and posture information. These results indicate that the robot's ability to understand and make utterances about a customer's orientation and attention effectively enhances human-robot communication and purchasing motivation.

Speech production under uncertainty: how do job applicants experience and communicate with an AI interviewer?

Abstract Theories and research in human–machine communication (HMC) suggest that machines, when replacing humans as communication partners, change the processes and outcomes of communication. With artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly used to interview and evaluate job applicants, employers should consider the effects of AI on applicants’ psychology and performance during AI-based interviews. This study examined job applicants’ experience and speech fluency when evaluated by AI. In a three-condition between-subjects experiment (N = 134), college students had an online mock job interview under the impression that their performance would be evaluated by a human recruiter, an AI system, or an AI system with a humanlike interface. Participants reported higher uncertainty and lower social presence and had a higher articulation rate in the AI-evaluation condition than in the human-evaluation condition. Through lowering social presence, AI evaluation increased speech rate and reduced silent pauses. Findings inform theories of HMC and practices of automated recruitment and professional training.

Pour une francophonie des communautés: Multilinguisme, tradition institutionnelle et langue de l’école dans la Principauté d’Andorre

We start from the premise that the Francophonie cannot be grasped as a uniform block, but rather as a set of communities that must be analysed empirically. Based on this observation, we propose a case study of the Francophonie in the Principality of Andorra. The Andorran case has common characteristics with other Francophone contexts, but also has many particularities. The French language lives in a multilingual ecosystem where it fulfils only formal functions. Andorra has a vernacular language – Catalan – which is also a vehicular language, but in strong competition with Castilian. Andorran society is extremely diverse, with a national group that does not make up half the population. This group co-habits with communities of nationals from countries of the same region (Spain, Portugal and France). Finally, despite the low social presence of French, it plays a predominant role as a language of instruction. The article looks at the literature on Francophonie and proposes the concepts used to characterize specifically the Andorran francophonie. Then it presents an objective characterization of the Andorran Francophonie through the study of its constitutive elements. Finally, it discusses the subjective characterization of the Andorran Francophonie.

Quantifying determinants of social conformity in an online debating website

Social conformity is the act of individuals adjusting their personal opinions to agree with an opposing majority. Previous work has identified multiple determinants of social conformity in controlled laboratory studies, but they remain largely untested in naturalistic online environments. For this study, we developed a realistic debating website, which 48 participants used for one week. We deployed four versions of the website using a 2 (high vs. low social presence) x 2 (high vs. low emphasis on majority–minority group composition) between-subjects factorial design. We found that participants were significantly more likely to conform when the platform promotes high social presence, despite its emphasis on group composition. Our qualitative findings further reveal how different aspects of social presence embedded in platform design (i.e., user representation, interactivity, and response visibility) contribute to heightened conformity behaviour. Our results provide evidence of the organic manifestation of conformity in online groups discussing subjective content and confirm the effect of platform design on online conformity behaviour. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of our findings on how future online platforms can be designed accounting for conformity influences.

Conformity on moral, social conventional and decency issues in the United Kingdom and Kuwait.

Theories in moral psychology have debated whether people's moral judgements are influenced by social processes, such as others' opinions, arguments, and actions. This research investigated conformity with moral, social conventional and decency issues in adults from the United Kingdom (Study 1, N= 50) and Kuwait (Study 2, N= 164). Participants first had to make individual judgements regarding moral, social conventional and decency transgressions. Using a conformity paradigm with low social presence, 5-10 days afterwards participants were presented with the judgements of a more permissive majority. British participants conformed to the majority for decency, and to a lesser extent moral, transgressions. Kuwaiti participants conformed across domains. Furthermore, females in Kuwait conformed more than males. These findings are discussed with reference to the influence of cultural, moral and gender norms on conformity. Furthermore, we consider the contributions of these findings in light of theories of moral judgement and conformity.

Impact of emergency remote teaching on nursing students’ engagement, social presence, and satisfaction during the COVID‐19 pandemic

BackgroundThe COVID‐19 pandemic interrupted face‐to‐face education and forced universities into an emergency remote teaching curriculum. Studies show that students’ engagement, social presence, and satisfaction are critical factors for optimal online teaching.PurposeTherefore, in this study, we sought to understand how the sudden transition to emergency remote teaching impacted nursing students’ engagement and social presence, as well as how it affected their satisfaction with online courses in a middle‐eastern public university.MethodsA cross‐sectional descriptive correlative research design was adopted in this study. Data were collected through three questionnaires measuring students’ engagement, social presence, and satisfaction with emergency remote teaching compared to the traditional approach from a sample of 177 nursing students.ResultsResults indicate that students had a high level of engagement but low social presence and low satisfaction level with emergency remote teaching. Additionally, both engagement and social presence were positively associated with satisfaction.ConclusionOur findings support the importance of engaging students and integrating social presence strategies into online courses to enhance nursing students’ satisfaction.

Service robots and COVID-19: exploring perceptions of prevention efficacy at hotels in generation Z

PurposeCOVID-19 is expected to enhance hospitality robotization because frontline robots facilitate social distancing, lowering contagion risk. Investing in frontline robots emerges as a solution to recover customer trust and encourage demand. However, we ignore how customers perceive these initiatives and, therefore, their efficacy. Focusing on robot employment at hotels and on Generation Z customers, this study aims to analyze guests’ perceptions about robots’ COVID-19 prevention efficacy and their impact on booking intentions.Design/methodology/approachThis study tests its hypotheses combining an experimental design methodology with partial least squares. Survey data from 711 Generation Z individuals in Spain were collected in 2 periods of time.FindingsGeneration Z customers consider that robots reduce contagion risk at hotels. Robot anthropomorphism increases perceived COVID-19 prevention efficacy, regardless of the context where the robots are used. Robots’ COVID-19 prevention efficacy provokes better attitudes and higher booking intentions.Research limitations/implicationsThe sampling method used in this research impedes this study’s results generalization. Further research could replicate this study using random sampling methods to ensure representativeness, even for other generational cohorts.Practical implicationsEmploying robots as a COVID-19 prevention measure can enhance demand, especially if robots are human-like. Hoteliers need to communicate that robots can reduce contagion risk, particularly in markets more affected by COVID-19. Robots must be employed in low social presence contexts. Governments could encourage robotization by financially supporting hotels and publicly acknowledging its benefits regarding COVID-19 prevention.Originality/valueThis study combines preventive health, robotics and hospitality literature to study robot implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on Generation Z guests – potential facilitators of robot diffusion.

How chatbots' social presence communication enhances consumer engagement: the mediating role of parasocial interaction and dialogue

PurposeThis study presents one of the earliest empirical investigations on how brand chatbots' anthropomorphic design and social presence communication strategies may improve consumer evaluation outcomes via the mediators of parasocial interaction and perceived dialogue.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a 2 (high vs. low social presence communication) by 2 (anthropomorphic vs. non-anthropomorphic bot profile) between-subject experimental design to evaluate how chatbots' high social presence communication and anthropomorphic profile design may enhance perceptions of parasocial interactions and dialogue with the chatbot, which in turn drive user engagement, interaction satisfaction and attitude toward the represented brand.FindingsThe influences of chatbots' high social presence communication on consumer engagement outcomes are mediated by perceived parasocial interaction and dialogue. Additionally, chatbots' anthropomorphic profile design can boost the positive effects of social presence communication via the psychological mediators.Originality/valueThis study advances the interactive marketing literature by focusing on an emerging interactive technology, chatbots. Additionally, distinct from prior chatbot studies that focused on the utilitarian use of chatbots for online customer support, this study not only examines which factors of chatbot communication and profile design may drive chatbot effectiveness but also examines the mechanism underlying the messaging and design effects on consumer engagement. The findings highlight the mediating role of interpersonal factors of parasocial interaction and perceived dialogue.

The next best thing: Social presence and accountability's impact on auditor professional skepticism

AbstractAudit fieldwork is shifting from the client site to remote environments due to generational preferences, budget restrictions, and health mandates as seen with the COVID‐19 pandemic. This may negatively impact professional skepticism without purposeful safeguards. Based in Social Presence Theory (SPT), our experiment uses Big 4 senior auditors to examine how the perceived level of social presence (high vs. low) influences an auditor's professional skepticism and how increasing one's feeling of accountability can increase auditor skepticism in a remote audit environment. We predict and find that auditors who feel a greater degree of social presence with their client are more skeptical. We also find that increasing an auditor's feelings of accountability can increase skepticism, and that increasing accountability in a low social presence environment can mitigate lower feelings of professional skepticism. This finding offers an effective and efficient method to help auditors remain skeptical in remote audit environments.

Exploring bloggers' switching toward microblogging

PurposeBuilt upon the push–pull–mooring framework, this study explores the factors that affect user switching from blog to microblogging. Low social presence is posited to form the push effect of blog, whereas larger referent network size and relative ease of use work together to shape the pull effect of newly emerging microblogging. Furthermore, adopting the status quo bias theory and habit literature as theoretical lens, affective commitment, switching costs and habit are regarded as important sources of inertia. Inertia is presumed to play a key role in mooring effects because it negatively affects switching intention and attenuates the main effects of pull and push factors. More importantly, the effects of affective commitment, switching costs and habit on switching intention are fully mediated through inertia.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical study of 239 users who use blog and microblogging services concurrently was conducted in China.FindingsOur findings indicate that low social presence pushes bloggers away, whereas relative ease of use pulls them to the microblogging. Affective commitment, switching costs and habit are important sources of inertia. In the context of this study, inertia fully mediates the relationship between habit and switching intention, and only partially mediates the effect of affective commitment and switching costs on switching intention. Furthermore, inertia negatively moderates the relationships between social presence, relative ease of use and switching intention.Originality/valueThis study expands our understanding of online service switching mechanism, and identified key factors in IT switching, such as social presence, affective commitment and inertia. We believe that these mechanisms and key factors are not necessarily limited to online services, but are largely applicable to other contexts in which people interact with technology. This study builds a useful foundation for future research.

Beyond the Boundary of Healthcare Systems: Can Social Capital Complement Health Outcomes of the Aging?

This paper delves into the association between social capital and health outcomes of the aging in Bangladesh. Methodological triangulation was used to synthesize primary data in this study. The data were collected based on a sample survey from 310 aging people in the aged ≥ 60 years in 2016. Findings reveal that social networks, norms of reciprocity, trust, neighborhood social cohesion and civic participation, and economic hardship are associated with self rated health status. The aging who had low social networks, norms of reciprocity and neighborhood cohesion and economic hardship were 1.917, 2.354, 2.185, and 1.949 times more likely to say that they had poor self rated health status. The synergy index between low social network and economic hard ship, low norm of reciprocity and economic hardship and low neighborhood cohesion were1.592 and 1.939 and, 2.067 supported that effect of joint exposure (low social capital and presence of economic hardship) is greater than the effect predicted from the sum of effects of each factor acting separately. The study concludes that economic hardship reduction is more important to access health care.
 
 Keywords: Social capital, healthcare systems, economic hardship, self rated health, health outcomes, interaction effects

Self-directed learners’ perceptions and experiences of learning computer science through MIT open courseware

ABSTRACT Given the rapid rise of open educational resources (OER) for informal learning pursuits impacting countless millions of people each day around the world, this study investigated the impact of the initiative that spearheaded this movement; namely, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) open courseware (OCW). More specifically, it explored self-directed learners’ perceptions of the impact of the MIT OCW, their social presences and cognitive presences while learning through MIT OCW online instructional videos. The data source of this study was learner comments regarding 23 instructional videos found in YouTube. Thematic analysis and computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) were used for data analysis. The results indicated that the impact of the MIT OCW served as the first step for career development and important educational decisions of myriad learners that served to benefit MIT programmes with future applicants. In addition, YouTube comments of the self-directed learners reflected a relatively lower social presence and higher cognitive presence compared to general social media. Meanwhile, self-directed learners encountered challenges such as technology issues, non-engaging teaching methods, and social learning needs. Perhaps the future OER and OCW development will, in fact, be designed for a more interactive and engaging experience for the self-directed learners of this world.

Understanding Users’ Engagement and Responses in 3D Virtual Reality: The Influence of Presence on User Value

AbstractVirtual reality (VR) provides new opportunities for businesses to gain competitive advantages by enabling them to innovatively engage customers. Based on presence theory, this study aims to test the influences of two major components of presence, social presence and spatial presence, on users’ perceptions of hedonic value, utilitarian value and engagement in the VR environment. An experiment was conducted on two conditions of a VR application (low vs. high social presence) to test the hypotheses proposed in the research model. The results reveal that social presence and spatial presence can improve the hedonic value of VR. However, inconsistent with previous studies, our findings reveal a negative relationship between spatial presence and engagement. Theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are subsequently discussed.

Discovering MOOC learner motivation and its moderating role

ABSTRACT In massive open online courses (MOOCs), learners have diverse types of motivation. Learners with different motivations have different interaction behaviours, presence, and learning outcomes. However, scant research has investigated the moderating role of learner motivations in the associations between presence and learning outcomes. This study examined MOOC learner motivation and its moderating role by surveying 646 MOOC learners. By exploratory factor analysis, this study identified four types of motivation: interest in knowledge, curiosity and expansion, connection and recognition, and professional relevance. Based on motivation, the study clustered learners into high-motivation, low-motivation, and asocial learners. Both high-motivation and asocial learners reported strong interest in knowledge and professional relevance, but asocial learners reported the lowest level of connection and recognition among the three groups of learners. Despite the low social presence, the asocial learners still had high levels of cognitive and teaching presence and learning outcomes. In addition, learners with higher presence generally perceived higher cognitive learning, but asocial learners with higher social presence were less satisfied. The results highlight the impacts of specific types of motivation to enrol in MOOCs and suggest designing different environments for learners with different motivation types.

Users’ psychophysiological, vocal, and self-reported responses to the apparent attitude of a virtual audience in stereoscopic 360°-video

This research analyzes the psychological reactions of participants to the neutral, positive, or negative attitudes of a virtual audience recorded in 360°-video. Participants were asked to deliver three speeches, each accompanied by a different type of reaction from the virtual audience. Measures of user state included questionnaires, psychophysiological measures, and voice recordings. The results showed that, compared to the neutral audience, the negative audience elicited increases in skin conductance level and heart rate variability, decreases in voice intensity, and a higher ratio of silent parts in the speech, as well as a more negative self-reported valence, higher anxiety, and lower social presence. These findings evidence that, even if some attributes that are considered to be central to immersive experiences are lacking, (i.e., interactivity or avatar representation of the user), 360°-video recreations of virtual environments lead to realistic reactions on users. These results support the effectiveness of 360°-video virtual audiences for public speaking training and social anxiety treatment.

Highly automated job interviews: Acceptance under the influence of stakes

Technological advancements allow the automation of every part of job interviews (information acquisition, information analysis, action selection, action implementation) resulting in highly automated interviews. Efficiency advantages exist, but it is unclear how people react to such interviews (and whether reactions depend on the stakes involved). Participants (N = 123) in a 2 (highly automated, videoconference) × 2 (high‐stakes, low‐stakes situation) experiment watched and assessed videos depicting a highly automated interview for high‐stakes (selection) and low‐stakes (training) situations or an equivalent videoconference interview. Automated high‐stakes interviews led to ambiguity and less perceived controllability. Additionally, highly automated interviews diminished overall acceptance through lower social presence and fairness. To conclude, people seem to react negatively to highly automated interviews and acceptance seems to vary based on the stakes.Open Practices This study was pre‐registered on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/hgd5r) and on AsPredicted (https://AsPredicted.org/i52c6.pdf).

The relationship between social presence and cognitive load

PurposeAs online learning has become more prevalent, how learners interact with each other in those learning environments has become more salient. To develop effective levels of interaction, students must feel comfortable to express their ideas and views. For this reason, this paper aims to look at how individual students’ levels of social presence affect germane cognitive load. Germane cognitive load is the amount that students are able to construct schema and can be seen as analogous to learning.Design/methodology/approachThis study looks at the results of survey data (n = 433) that investigate the relationship between social presence and germane cognitive load. The students were surveyed from the Open Cyber University of Korea in the fall semester of 2018.FindingsThe present study found a statistically significant positive relationship between social presence and germane cognitive load. The study found a Spearman’s correlation coefficient of 0.595. Furthermore, the sample was divided into a high, medium and low grouping of social presence. Among these groupings, the high level social presence had the highest level of germane cognitive load, and the low level social presence had the lowest level of germane cognitive load.Originality/valueThis result shows the importance and value of developing levels of social presence in online environments. Some research has shown relationships between student interaction and learning, but the present study looks directly at social presence and germane cognitive load. From this research, the authors can see the value of encouraging higher levels of social interaction in online learning environments.

ON THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL PRESENCE IN ONLINE COURSE DISCUSSIONS

“Social presence,” the degree to which participants in computer-mediated communication feel affectively connected one to another, has been shown to be an important factor in student satisfaction and success in online courses. This mixed methods study built on previous research to explore in greater depth the nature of social presence and how it develops in online course discussions. The study combined quantitative analyses of survey results from students enrolled in four online graduate courses, and qualitative comparisons of students with the highest and lowest perceptions of social presence. Quantitative results revealed significant correlations between perceived social presence and satisfaction with online discussions, and teased apart the respective influences of the perceived presence of instructors and peers. The findings indicate that the perceived presence of instructors may be a more influential factor in determining student satisfaction than the perceived presence of peers. Correlations with other course and learner characteristics suggest that course design may also significantly affect the development of social presence. Qualitative findings support the quantitative results. In addition, they provide evidence that students perceiving the highest social presence also projected themselves more into online discussions,and reveal meaningful differences in perceptions of the usefulness and purpose of online discussion between students perceiving high and low social presence.

Expense report abuse: influence of mood and social presence

This paper examines the impact of mood and social presence of communication medium on ethical decision making within an expense reporting setting. Based on theoretical accounting research (Gaudine and Thorne, 2001), we predict that negative mood will result in more unethical expense reporting. From the social presence literature (Bazerman et al., 2000), we anticipate that an online reporting system will result in more unethical behaviour due to its low social presence, as opposed to face–to–face expense reporting with high social presence. Our findings confirm these predictions and interestingly discover that communication medium mediates the effect of mood, whereas the debriefing techniques had very little effect. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Fraudulent expense reporting: impact of manager responsiveness and social presence

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of manager responsiveness and social presence in the decision to engage in fraudulent expense reporting. While research has focussed on the direct effect of information technology (IT) on user behaviors, there is a lack of research investigating possible mediating factors of this relationship. As such, the paper examines the impact of affect and its effect on users’ behavior when using ITs.Design/methodology/approach– The authors conduct an experiment to investigate possible behavior differences due to affect formulated in the early phase of pre-travel approval and the use of IT in the expense reporting phase. Consistent with social presence theory, the experiment participants engage in the pre-travel approval and expense reporting phases using either face-to-face communication (high-social presence) or web-based communication (low-social presence). The authors manipulate conditions in which affect is formulated by varying the manager's responses to the pre-travel approval request between positive and negative. All participants in the experiment then file an expense report.Findings– The authors find that negative managerial support for employees’ pre-travel requests and the resulting negative employee affect have a significant impact on expense reporting behavior. Social presence during the pre-travel approval and expense reporting phases itself is not a sufficient factor to explain variations in final expense reporting behavior. However, when considering manager responsiveness, employee affect, and social presence together, the authors find that social presence is not an isolated factor. If an employee forms negative feelings, a low-social presence as observed in web-based communication leads to more undesired expense reporting behavior.Research limitations/implications– Results of this study contribute both to research and practice. This research is the first to investigate expense reporting fraud in a controlled experiment to isolate possible causes of the behavior using an experiment methodology. In addition, the paper investigates two very important factors identified in the prior literature as critical factors explaining the effect of using ITs on actual behaviors: manager responsiveness and social presence.Practical implications– As companies seek help from ITs to process and manage expense reports in order to curb ever-rising operating costs, an important but unapparent assumption is consistently overlooked: do people act the same way when facing the less-human IT as when facing a real person? This study contributes to the literature by investigating this issue from two perspectives, the psychological factor due to manager responsiveness and the effect of social presence by using less-human IT to complete the expense report process.Originality/value– Recent economic situations have put pressure on organizations to cut costs by implementing new technologies to streamline expense reporting processes. At the same time, deterring fraudulent behavior is also a top priority in many organizations. This study provides evidence that psychological factors cannot be overlooked when information systems are used to improve business processes and prevent fraud.