Likability Bias in Robot Service Failure Tolerance: A Three‐Way Interaction Model of Travelers' Psychological Ownership, Failure Severity, and Robot Likability
Ruoran Liu, Jin‐Xing Hao, Yan Yu, Rob Law · International Journal of Tourism Research · 2025
ABSTRACT Likability bias leads people to favor likable objects and tolerate their failures. Improving service robot likability is viewed as a promising strategy to combat the inevitable service failure caused by immature robot technology. However, this study argued that such bias does not always hold in robot service failure. From the cognitive appraisal perspective, this study proposed a contingency model of robot likability, examining the interaction of travelers' psychological ownership and failure severity through four experiments using video‐vignette and textual scenarios. Results show that travelers' psychological ownership and failure severity weaken the positive effects of robot likability on service failure tolerance. More importantly, robot likability plays a negative role when both factors are high. This study revealed the contingency factors of likability bias in robot service failures that enrich cognitive appraisal theory and psychological ownership theory. It also offers managerial implications for effectively deploying likable robots in tourism and hospitality.