Ready for Take-off? – Gestaltung und Wahrnehmung von Reiseimpfberatungschatbots

The rise of digital speech-based assistants (e.g., Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Hellofresh’s chatbot) gained increased popularity and has also found its way into healthcare. A current example is WHO’s WhatsApp chatbot that informs users about COVID-19. Such assistants can educate patients, independent of location and time, which is an incredible benefit for patients. However, in addition to existing technical challenges (including the development and optimization of speech recognition algorithms), there are also challenges in human-chatbot-interactions. This study investigates the role of a human-like design (including human name, greeting, and human avatar) of a travel vaccination advice chatbot on the perception of its users. Specifically, we aim to understand whether and how anthropomorphism (the perception of humanness and social presence in objects, animals, and machines) affects perceived trustworthiness and ultimately service satisfaction. In an online experiment with 78 participants, two chatbot designs (with human-like design elements vs. without these elements) were compared. The results show that perceived social presence significantly increases perceived trustworthiness and service satisfaction. Thus, we recommend that practitioners implement a human-like design travel vaccination counseling and similar counseling processes via chatbots.