Development and validation of a robot social presence measurement dimension scale

Robots that can exhibit human-like behaviour, build social relationships with humans, and carry out social interaction that can be considered to have a social presence. Measuring the social presence of robots can provide an important basis for optimizing the design of robots’ human-like behaviour, but until now, there has been no research and discussion on the presence of robots from the perspective of social interaction. Based on related studies, such as the theory of the presence of interpersonal interaction society, the mechanism of network social presence measurement and human–computer interaction, this study constructs a theoretical model of robot social presence, and develops corresponding measurement scales with five dimensions, namely, the presence, attention distribution, interactive expression and information understanding, perceived emotional interdependence, and interaction behaviour perception. The 5-dimensional robot social presence model was finalized, and a 17-question questionnaire scale was developed. The validation of the model and the development of the scale includes one expert assessment (involving three experts), one user interview (involving five interviewees), and two questionnaire surveys (involving 172 valid questionnaires and 494 valid questionnaires respectively). The final model shows good reliability of the measurement questionnaire, high inter-factor correlation, high model fit, high internal consistency of the dimensions, high reliability of the scale, and high convergent validity of all dimensions. This study provides a theoretical basis for the study of robot social presence and human–robot collaboration and provides a reference measurement tool for social robot-related development and research.