Who do you choose? Comparing perceptions of human vs robo-advisor in the context of financial services
ISSN: 0887-6045
Article publication date: 3 February 2021
Issue publication date: 1 September 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the differences in consumers’ perceptions of trust, performance expectancy and intention to hire between human financial advisors with high/low expertise and robo-advisors.
Design/methodology/approach
Three experiments were conducted. The respondents were randomly assigned to human advisors with high/low expertise or a robo-advisor. Data were analyzed using MANCOVA.
Findings
The results suggest that consumers prefer human financial advisors with high expertise to robo-advisors. There are no significant differences between robo-advisors and novice financial advisors regarding performance expectancy and intention to hire.
Originality/value
This pioneering study extends the self-service technology adoption theory to examine adoption of robo-advisors vs human financial advisors with different expertise levels. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is among the first studies to address multi-dimensionality of trust in the context of artificial intelligence-based self-service technologies.
Keywords
Citation
Zhang, L., Pentina, I. and Fan, Y. (2021), "Who do you choose? Comparing perceptions of human vs robo-advisor in the context of financial services", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 35 No. 5, pp. 634-646. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-05-2020-0162
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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