Do contagion cues shape customers’ willingness to adopt hospitality service robots?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, service robots have been widely used to maintain social distancing in the hospitality industry. It is therefore important to explore the factors that drive customers’ adoption of service robots under health concerns. This study focuses on how disease contagion cues shape customers’ willingness to adopt service robots in hospitality by using restaurant as the representative scenario. Drawing on the theory of the behavioral immune system, we proposed an underlying process in terms of social avoidance and infection-combating action. The results of three experiments demonstrate that contagion cues motivate customers to choose service robots over human servers. Service robots are associated with less interpersonal contact, which is aligned with the social avoidance tendency triggered by the contagion cues. However, such effect is eliminated when infection-combating action has been taken. This study makes theoretical and practical contributions to research on hospitality service encounters and the application of robotics. • Sensing contagion cues positively influences willingness to adopt service robots. • Social avoidance tendency mediates contagion cues and robotic adoption. • BIS influence on robotic adoption may be attenuated by infection-combating actions. • Pandemic impact on hospitality service robot adoption is contingent.