Enhancing intellectual experiences for users: a multidimensional model of humanoid service robots in hospitality and tourism

Purpose: Intellectual experiences focus on users’ information processing and critical thinking toward stimuli. The deployment of humanoid service robots as novel stimuli in tourism and hospitality has influenced users’ perceptions and may affect their intellectual engagement. This paper aims to connect four contemporary theoretical concepts: the service robot acceptance model, technological fear, the uncanny valley theory and the stereotype content model, to investigate users’ perceptions and intellectual experiences toward humanoid service robots. Design/methodology/approach: Scale development procedures were conducted: literature review, checking face and content validity, factorizing items and dimensions, achieving construct and criterion validity and testing predictive validity. Findings: Through literature review and free-response tasks, 43 measurement items were generated. Next, 1,006 samples from two cross-cultural groups refined the scale. Finally, a reliable and valid scale with four dimensions measuring users’ perceptions of humanoid service robots was determined. Practical implications: Humanoid service robots should be designed to enhance functionality and innovativeness while minimizing stiffness, inflexibility, unsafety and danger to improve users’ intellectual engagement. Originality/value: This study provides a novel examination of users’ intellectual experiences toward humanoid service robots by connecting four contemporary theories of users’ perceptions. This study enriches human–robot experience through an integrated perspective and presents a rigorous examination of the scale’s psychometric properties. A reliable and valid scale for measuring users’ perceptions toward humanoid service robots fills the gaps and serves as an effective predictor of intellectual experience in human–robot literature.