Delving into emotions: a study of social robots’ use in hotels

Recent technological developments have enabled social robots’ engagement in hotel services. Customer emotions in social robots use in hotels play important roles in understanding human-robot interactions (HRI). However, the underlying factors inducing customer emotions in social robots use remain underexplored. By employing text mining and content analysis approaches based on 4053 online reviews about social robots use in hotels from TripAdvisor, this study uncovers the specific factors concerning six discrete emotions (joy, surprise, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness) from the view of social robots’ utilitarian, social, and hedonic functions. In addition, the anthropomorphic features of social robots, such as appearance and voice, were discovered to induce both joy and fear. This study contributes to the HRI literature by providing explanations for customers’ discrete emotions in social robots use from a functional view and provides practical guidelines for developers and hotel managers on social robots’ design and employment in hotels.