The Influence of Design Aesthetics on the Purchase Intention of AI-Generated Products: Taking Cultural and Creative Products as an Example

Artificial intelligence is currently being widely used in product design activities to help companies efficiently produce creative products that meet consumer needs. However, consumers’ attitudes towards AI-generated products are still unclear. Therefore, it is of great significance to study how consumers make decisions to purchase such products. In this paper, we examine the relationship between design aesthetics, attitudes toward AI, curiosity, and purchase intentions based on the SOR (Stimulus-Organism-Response) model. We conducted an online questionnaire survey and used partial least squares (PLS) statistics to test the model. The results show that purchase intention is directly and positively affected by both design aesthetics and attitude towards artificial intelligence, and that attitudes toward AI partially mediated the relationship between design aesthetics and purchase intention. Also, curiosity positively moderated the relationship between design aesthetics and attitudes toward AI. In summary, this study can complement research on consumer attitudes towards AI-generated products and help designers and marketers create design norms to improve the competitiveness of their products.