Predicting the intentions to use chatbots for travel and tourism

As with other businesses, tourist companies are taking advantage of modern technologies. Chatbots are a recent technology that hotels, travel agencies, and airline companies are adopting. Despite this industry-wide implementation, there is no evidence about the factors that explain why consumers are willing to interact with chatbots. This work proposes a model to explain chatbot usage intention. The model and its hypotheses were tested by structural equations with the PLS technique. The study was conducted on a sample of 476 individuals who had travelled on vacation in the previous 12 months. The study reveals that the intentions behind using chatbots are directly influenced by the following factors: the chatbots' expected performance, the habit of using chatbots, the hedonic component in using them, the predisposition to using self-service technologies, the social influences, and the fact that the chatbot behaves like a human. The inconvenience and problems related to communicating with the chatbot were found to have a negative influence. Lastly, the possibility that chatbots could replace jobs had a surprisingly positive influence, and not a negative one.

Automated summary

Through a study of 476 individuals who had traveled on vacation in the previous 12 months, this research found that factors influencing chatbot usage intention include expected performance, usage habit, hedonic component, preference for self-service technologies, social influences, and human-like behavior. Inconvenience related to communicating with chatbots and the possibility of job replacement had a negative impact, while surprisingly, the latter had a positive influence.