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The Influence of Politeness Behavior on User Compliance with Social Robots in a Healthcare Service Setting

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Abstract

Particularly in the healthcare service domain, social robots are expected to be good assistants, advisers, or practitioners. To increase the effectiveness of healthcare services provided by social robots, patients must comply with their requests. Research is plentiful on what makes patients comply with healthcare advice. In this paper, which is based on Bulgurcu’s study of rationality-based beliefs, command-compliance theory, and social exchange theory, we propose a research model of compliance during interaction with social robots, examining beliefs about and overall assessments of the consequences of complying with robot requests and extending the findings of previous studies to the setting of healthcare services. We specifically investigate the perceived level of politeness in robots’ speech and gestures as a determinant of compliance intention. Using a social robot, NAO, as a provider of healthcare services, we conducted an experiment. The results suggest that the aforementioned theories are useful in understanding user behaviors toward social robots in a healthcare service setting. Interestingly, and unlike in other settings, the perceived level of politeness of a social robot in a healthcare service setting negatively affects the perceived benefit of compliance, and, hence, intention to comply. A lower politeness level is closer to a command or strong recommendation than a suggestion or causal recommendation, which is common in shopping, tourism, or convention settings. The findings of this study imply that polite behavior from a social robot is an important factor in the compliance of healthcare service users. Direct speech with polite gestures is the most effective way to increase patient compliance in with healthcare advice provided by social robots in healthcare settings. However, higher levels of politeness do not always increase patients’ intention to comply.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Strategic R&D Program for Industrial Technology (10041659) and funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sungkyul University, Anyang, Kyunggi-do, Republic of Korea

    Namyeon Lee

  2. Kyung Hee University, Hoegi-dong, Dondaemun-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Jeonghun Kim, Eunji Kim & Ohbyung Kwon

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  1. Namyeon Lee
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Correspondence to Ohbyung Kwon.

Appendices

Appendix A

See Table 9.

Table 9 Constructs and items
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Appendix B

See Table 10.

Table 10 Results of exploratory factor analysis
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Lee, N., Kim, J., Kim, E. et al. The Influence of Politeness Behavior on User Compliance with Social Robots in a Healthcare Service Setting. Int J of Soc Robotics 9, 727–743 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-017-0420-0

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