Human-Robot Similarity and Willingness to Work with a Robotic Co-worker

Organizations now face a new challenge of encouraging their employees to work alongside robots. In this paper, we address this problem by investigating the impacts of human-robot similarity, trust in a robot, and the risk of physical danger on individuals' willingness to work with a robot and their willingness to work with a robot over a human co-worker. We report the results from an online experimental study involving 200 participants. Results showed that human-robot similarity promoted trust in a robot, which led to willingness to work with robots and ultimately willingness to work with a robot over a human co-worker. However, the risk of danger moderated not only the positive link between the surface-level similarity and trust in a robot, but also the link between intention to work with the robot and willingness to work with a robot over a human co-worker. We discuss several implications for the theory of human-robot interaction and design of robots.