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Behavioral economics poses a challenge for the welfare evaluation of choices, particularly those that involve risk. It demands that we recognize that the descriptive account of behavior toward those choices might not be the ones we were all taught, and still teach, and that subjective risk perceptions might not accord with expert assessments of probabilities. In addition to these challenges, we are faced with the need to jettison naive notions of revealed preferences, according to which every choice by a subject expresses her objective function, as behavioral evidence forces us to confront pervasive inconsistencies and noise in a typical individual’s choice data. A principled account of errant choice must be built into models used for identification and estimation. These challenges demand close attention to the methodological claims often used to justify policy interventions. They also require, we argue, closer attention by economists to relevant contributions from cognitive science. We propose that a quantitative application of the “intentional stance” of Dennett provides a coherent, attractive and general approach to behavioral welfare economics.

Based on appraisal theory and social response theory, this study aims to explore the mechanism of AI failure types on consumer recovery expectation from the perspective of service failure assessment and validate the moderate role of anthropomorphism level.

Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to validate the research model. First, to test the effect of robot service failure types on customer recovery expectation; second, to further test the mediating role of perceived controllability, perceived stability and perceived severity; finally, to verify the moderating effect of anthropomorphic level.

Non-functional failures reduce consumer recovery expectation compared to functional failures; perceived controllability and perceived severity play a mediating role in the impact of service failure types on recovery expectation; the influence of service failure types on perceived controllability and perceived severity is moderated by the anthropomorphism level.

The findings enrich the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of service failure types, and have implications for online enterprise follow-up service recovery and improvement of anthropomorphic design.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the problem of kinematics incompatibility of human–exoskeleton in the existing rigid lower-limb exoskeleton (LLE).

In this paper, following an introduction, the motion characteristics of the human knee joint and the design method of the exoskeleton were introduced. A kinematics model of the LLE based on cross-four-bar linkage was obtained. The structural parameters of the LLE mechanism were optimized by the particle swarm optimization algorithm. The predefined trajectories used in the optimization process were derived from the ankle joint, not the instantaneous center of rotation of the knee joint. Finally, the motion deviation of the optimization result was simulated, and the human–exoskeleton coordination experiment was designed to compare with the traditional single-axis knee joint in terms of comfort and coordination.

The lower limb exoskeleton mechanism obtained in this paper has a good tracking effect on human movement and has been improved in terms of comfort and coordination compared with the traditional single-axis knee joint.

The customized exoskeleton design method introduced in this paper is relatively simple, and the obtained exoskeleton has better movement coordination than the traditional exoskeleton. It can provide a reference for the design of lower limb exoskeleton and lower limb orthosis.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the relationships among the intellectual ability of artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive emotional processes and the positive and negative reactions of human members. The authors also examined the moderating role of AI status in teams.

The authors designed an experiment and recruited 120 subjects who were randomly distributed into one of three groups classified by the upper, middle and lower organization levels of AI in the team. The findings in this study were derived from subjects’ self-reports and their performance in the experiment.

Regardless of the position held by AI, human members believed that its intelligence level is positively correlated with dependence behavior. However, when the AI and human members are at the same level, the higher the intelligence of AI, the more likely it is that its direct interaction with team members will lead to conflicts.

This paper only focuses on human–AI harmony in transactional work in hybrid teams in enterprises. As AI applications permeate, it should be considered whether the findings can be extended to a broader range of AI usage scenarios.

These results are helpful for understanding how to improve team performance in light of the fact that team members have introduced AI into their enterprises in large quantities.

This study contributes to the literature on how the intelligence level of AI affects the positive and negative behaviors of human members in hybrid teams. The study also innovatively introduces “status” into hybrid organizations.

We aim to help better understand how organizations can develop their human capital in virtual teams through technological advances in the metaverse. To this end, we examine how virtual team collaboration with virtual reality technologies in the metaverse compares to traditional videoconferencing. Our study demonstrates how the metaverse can facilitate collaboration in virtual teams and examines the factors that are critical to successful team collaboration in the metaverse.

We conduct a lab experiment comparing Meta Horizon Workrooms with Zoom. Using a between-subjects design, we observe virtual team collaboration in five teams. All teams solved the Lost on the Moon Exercise used by NASA to train teamwork. We collected data during and after the experiment to explore emerging collaborative behaviors based on audio and video recordings, a quantitative survey, and qualitative feedback.

We find higher levels of immersion, social presence, and collaboration among team members in the metaverse. We further identify new opportunities for social interaction and greater focus on team members and shared tasks. Our study suggests that the metaverse can enable effective collaboration in virtual teams and uncovers related guidance for organizations.

We connect the research streams on the metaverse, team collaboration, and human capital. We add empirical evidence to the largely theoretical discussion on the metaverse and explore collaboration tools for virtual teams, helping to enable effective collaboration of organizations’ virtual teams. We hope to stimulate further research to unlock the full collaborative potential of the metaverse and establish the metaverse for effective development of human capital.

Customers' co-design behavior is an important source of knowledge for product innovation. Firms can regulate the focus of information interaction with customers to set goals and motivate their co-design behavior. Drawing on regulatory fit theory and construal level theory, the authors build a research model to study whether the fit between the regulatory focus of firms' task invitations (promotion focus vs prevention focus) and their feedback focus (self-focused vs other-focused) can enhance co-design behavior by improving customers' experiences (perceived meaning, active discovery and perceived empowerment).

The authors conducted two online between-subjects experiments to validate the proposed research model.

The two online experiments reveal that customers' experiences are enhanced when the feedback focus is congruent with the regulatory focus of the firm's task invitations. Specifically, self-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the prevention focus context. Other-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the promotion focus context. Moreover, customers' experience significantly and positively affects co-design behavior (i.e. co-design effort and knowledge contribution).

This work provides theoretical and practical implications for firms to improve the effectiveness of information interaction with their customers and eventually ensure the sustainability of co-design.

Despite corporate communications having an immense impact on corporate success, there is a lack of dedicated techniques for their management and visualization. A potential strategy is to apply business process management (BPM) approach with business process model and notation (BPMN) modeling techniques.

The goal of this study was to gain empirical insights into the cognitive effectiveness of BPMN-based corporate communications modeling. To this end, experimental research was performed in which subjects tested two modeling notations – standardized BPMN conversation diagrams and a BPMN extension with corporate communications-specific concepts.

Standard conversation diagrams were demonstrated to be more time-efficient for designing and interpreting diagrams. However, the subjects made significantly fewer mistakes when interpreting the diagrams modeled in the BPMN extension. Subjects also evolved positive perceptions toward the proposed extension.

BPMN-based corporate communications modeling may be applied to organizations to depict how formal communications are or should be performed consistently, effectively and transparently by following and integrating with BPM approaches and modeling techniques.

The paper provides empirical insights into the cognitive effectiveness of corporate communications modeling based on BPMN and positions the corresponding models into typical process architecture.

Warehouses are under pressure to operate as efficiently as possible. In pursuit of attaining high efficiency in the order picking process, the warehouse manager must take several planning decisions, typically supported by a central planning system. However, highly centralised work erodes the autonomy of warehouse workers, interfering with worker well-being and productivity. This study holistically explores the impact of a work system with more decision autonomy for order pickers.

We conduct a unique field experiment in a real-world warehouse and use a within-subjects design to compare two work systems, one with worker autonomy and one without. 18 permanent employees participate in our study, in which we measure both psychosocial and physical well-being as well as productivity. Post-experimental interviews are conducted to delve deeper into the observed effects.

Our study illustrates that involving order pickers in operational decisions can benefit their job satisfaction and motivation without compromising productivity. Although we fail to find significance at the conventional level (α = 0.05), we do find marginally significant effects of our treatment on physical well-being aspects. Furthermore, our intervention invoked a highly positive user experience.

We show that slightly loosening tight process control results in organisational and individual benefits without endangering smooth operational flows. The warehouse in this paper acknowledged this and decided to permanently work according to this philosophy.

This study is the first to holistically explore the effects of a participatory work setting in a real-world warehouse.

Service robots are expected to become increasingly common, but the ways in which they can move around in an environment with humans, collect and store data about humans and share such data produce a potential for privacy violations. In human-to-human contexts, such violations are transgression of norms to which humans typically react negatively. This study examines if similar reactions occur when the transgressor is a robot. The main dependent variable was the overall evaluation of the robot.

Service robot privacy violations were manipulated in a between-subjects experiment in which a human user interacted with an embodied humanoid robot in an office environment.

The results show that the robot's violations of human privacy attenuated the overall evaluation of the robot and that this effect was sequentially mediated by perceived robot morality and perceived robot humanness. Given that a similar reaction pattern would be expected when humans violate other humans' privacy, the present study offers evidence in support of the notion that humanlike non-humans can elicit responses similar to those elicited by real humans.

The results imply that designers of service robots and managers in firms using such robots for providing service to employees should be concerned with restricting the potential for robots' privacy violation activities if the goal is to increase the acceptance of service robots in the habitat of humans.

To date, few empirical studies have examined reactions to service robots that violate privacy norms.

A humanoid intelligent robot (HIR) possessing a human-like appearance can undertake human jobs, interact, communicate and even transmit emotions to human beings. Such robots have gradually been integrated into people's daily life and production scenarios. However, it is unclear whether and by what mechanism HIRs can stimulate people’s risk perception and its impact on consumption attitudes. Based on the risk decision theory, this study aims to take the social value substitution attribute of a HIR as the incentive and analyzes the influence of social value substitution and risk perception on the customers’ consumption attitudes.

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the related questions about the social value substitution attribute of a HIR, its impact on risk perception and the customers’ consumption attitudes.

The results reveal that physical labor, intellectual labor, friendship, kinship and the ego constitute the hierarchical elements of social value substitution. Among them, physical labor and intellectual labor pertain to the dimension of social function value substitution, while friendship, kinship and ego pertain to the dimension of social presence value substitution; social function value substitution and social presence value substitution affect the subjects’ risk perception positively, but the latter arouses a stronger risk perception; the 2 (risk perception of social function value: security/danger) × 2 (risk perception of social presence value: security/danger) condition corresponds to diverse consumption attitudes.

The results enrich the theories of the “cha-xu pattern” and “uncanny valley” and provide reference for the healthy development of the HIR industry.