![Sample our Computer Science journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5928/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Computer-Science.jpg"})
Abstract
This study investigates the role and effectiveness of political chatbots’ anthropomorphism in influencing voting intentions. Our findings reveal that participants show higher voting intention when they were exposed to the political chatbot with higher (vs. lower) levels of anthropomorphic visual cues. This research also investigated two moderators underlying this relationship: message type (factual vs. emotional message) and message interactivity (high vs. low interactivity). We found that compared to the less anthropomorphized political chatbot, participants’ voting intention was enhanced when the highly anthropomorphic chatbot delivered emotional (vs. factual) messages. In terms of message interactivity, the participants exhibited higher voting intentions when the political chatbot had lower levels of anthropomorphism and higher (lower) message interactivity. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The People Power Party is the main conservative party in South Korea.
2 We adopted a randomized posttest-only control group experiment designed; therefore, the interaction effects between variables corresponding to covariance were tested (gender × anthropomorphism, age × anthropomorphism, political ideology × anthropomorphism). The results showed no interaction effect with any other variables (all ps > 0.05). Also, the gender difference in all groups did not exceed 5%, and the average age of each group was between 32 and 37. In addition, over 90% of the participants of each group had a high school education or higher.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Yunju Kim
Yunju Kim is an adjunct professor at Kyung Hee University. Dr. Kim’s research interests include political campaigns, human-computer interaction, consumer psychology and behavior, etc., and received an Outstanding Thesis Award from the Korean Advertising Society in 2019.
Heejun Lee
Heejun Lee is an assistant professor in the Dept. of Advertising & PR at Daegu Catholic University. Before joining the university, he worked at Cheil Worldwide as a senior advertising account executive handling several global accounts such as Samsung, LG, and GM. His research interests are new media advertising and human-computer interaction.