The Rise of Chatbots in Political Campaigns: The Effects of Conversational Agents on Voting Intention
Yunju Kim, Heejun Lee · International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction · 2022
This study investigates the role and effectiveness of political chatbots’ anthropomorphism in influencing voting intentions. Our findings reveal that participants show higher voting intention when they were exposed to the political chatbot with higher (vs. lower) levels of anthropomorphic visual cues. This research also investigated two moderators underlying this relationship: message type (factual vs. emotional message) and message interactivity (high vs. low interactivity). We found that compared to the less anthropomorphized political chatbot, participants’ voting intention was enhanced when the highly anthropomorphic chatbot delivered emotional (vs. factual) messages. In terms of message interactivity, the participants exhibited higher voting intentions when the political chatbot had lower levels of anthropomorphism and higher (lower) message interactivity. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.