Customer Acceptance of Use of Artificial Intelligence in Hospitality Services: An Indian Hospitality Sector Perspective

This research endeavour tested and validated the artificially intelligent device use acceptance (AIDUA) three-stage AI acceptance framework in the context of the Indian hospitality sector. For this purpose, data on the constructs that captured primary appraisal (i.e., social influence, hedonic motivation and anthropomorphism), secondary appraisal (i.e., performance and effort expectancy), emotion, willingness to use AI devices and objection to use AI devices were captured from 210 guests/customers from 14 luxury hotels spread across the union territory of New Delhi and the state of Chandigarh in India. Findings that emerge from this study validate the fact that customers do indeed go through three stages of decision-making process before they demonstrate their proclivity to use AI devices or exhibit objection to use AI devices. In particular, the study found that both performance and effort expectancy influenced customer emotion which, in its turn, exercised its effect on the construct of willingness to use AI devices and objection to use AI devices among hotel customers. Accordingly, drawing from the findings of this study, implications for practitioners, decision-makers, and academic researchers are discussed in the article.