Author Identifier (ORCID)
Songshan Huang: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4990-2788
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to investigate employee responses to robot service failures. It examines how employees recover from such failures at varying levels of robot anthropomorphism, considering the mediating role of employee empathy and the moderating role of service failure type. Design/methodology/approach – Three scenario-based experiments were designed and implemented. The statistical analysis techniques adopted were independent samples t-test, multivariate analysis of variance and regression. Findings – Findings reveal: a curvilinear relationship exists between employee proactive/reactive recovery and robot anthropomorphism; employee empathy mediates this relationship; and physical affordance failures prompt low proactive and high reactive recovery for low-anthropomorphism robots, while cognitive affordance failures elicit the opposite pattern for high-anthropomorphism robots. Originality/value – This research enhances understanding of employee responses to robot service failures, offering insights for tourism and hospitality firms to encourage effective service recovery and foster human–robot collaboration.
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2025
Publication Title
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology
Publisher
Emerald
School
School of Business and Law
RAS ID
84238
Funders
National Social Science Foundation of China (23CGL030)
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Comments
This is an Authors Accepted Manuscript version of an article published by Emerald Publishing in Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology. The published article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-08-2024-0549
Zhang, J., Xie, C., & Huang, S. (2025). The effect of robot anthropomorphism on employee recovery of robot service failures: The mediation of employee empathy. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 16(5), 1252–1274. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-08-2024-0549