5.1 Intention to Adopt a Social Robot at Home
Before children have ever interacted with Cozmo in real-life, 82% of them indicated that they would like to use the robot at home. Only 18% of the children were unsure about adopting the robot or intended to reject it. This finding is in line with earlier findings on children’s acceptance of social robots (for an overview see [
14]). Generally, most children seem to be intrigued by the idea to have a social robot at home, regardless of the stage of acceptance. One reason for the overall positive approach of children to the adoption of social robots may be the novelty effect, which proposes that children show an initial enthusiasm towards a robot because it is new and unfamiliar (e.g., [
8,
100,
101]).
Although our finding of children’s overwhelming intention to adopt Cozmo merges with previous research, it is also somewhat surprising. In contrast to many previous studies, we focused on the
domestic adoption of a social robot. Adopting a social robot at home differs from using it, for example, at school or during a therapy session, which previous research centered upon. We expected children to be hesitant when it comes to adopting domestic social robots, especially without real familiarity with them and after limited exposure [
35]. However, even when children’s beliefs about the social robot are mainly based upon indirect experiences, they largely seem to intend to adopt the robot at home. This is an interesting finding because without an initial intention to adopt the social robot at home, there is little chance of subsequent acceptance.
5.2 A Model of Children’s Intended Social Robot Adoption
Our model of children’s intention to adopt a social robot at home was based upon psychological models, and in particular the TPB. The model hypothesized that attitudes, social norms, and self-efficacy would directly predict intention to adopt the robot. Moreover, we hypothesized, again in line with the TPB, that various distal predictors (i.e., personal and contextual factors) would be related to adoption intention both directly and indirectly, through the proximal predictors. Hedonic attitude towards adopting the robot had, by far, the largest association with adoption intention in the model. This was in line with our expectations as social robots for children are typically designed for entertainment purposes, and children also approach them with hedonic goals in mind [
45]. Our finding also dovetails with earlier findings on adults’ acceptance of social robots, where perceived enjoyment was a direct predictor of robot use [
47]. Moreover, a study on domestic use of voice-based agents, a technology related to social robots, showed that children focused on social and entertainment aspects when interacting with the agents [
102]. Overall, the consistency of these results suggests that a better understanding of why children, but probably also adults, intend to adopt current domestic social robots hinges on a more detailed study of hedonic, entertainment-related aspects of using social robots. It seems that children see current domestic social robots primarily as advanced toys, which deserves more attention from research (see also [
2]).
Utilitarian attitudes, in contrast, did not predict adoption intention in our model. This contradicted our expectations, which were based on the importance of utilitarian aspects in robot acceptance models for adults (e.g., [
13,
21]), in the sense that “the decision to use a social robot is the same as evaluating whether a social robot is useful” [26, p. 41]. Our results suggest that what constitutes the rational, instrumental attitude component in the TPB does not play a major role in children’s intended adoption of social robots, but note that the usefulness dimension of our measure may to some extent have assessed the usability of a robot and may need refinement and replication. At the theoretical level, this finding supports our choice of broader, psychologically oriented theoretical frameworks, such as the TPB [
40], rather than more specific, technologically oriented frameworks, such as the TAM [
38]. Earlier research on the acceptance of hedonic information systems has also shown that the applicability of TAM and UTAUT to hedonic systems is limited [
44] and we believe that researchers need to consider the choice of their theoretical frameworks carefully when studying the adoption of social robots. Our results do not rule out that models such as the TAM may be useful for adults and/or more utilitarian robots (e.g., domestic service robots). At least at the pre-adoption stage, however, technologically oriented models may be somewhat limited to explain why children want to adopt current domestic social robots.
Our results also point to the importance of both injunctive and descriptive norms in predicting children’s adoption intention. Adoption of a social robot at home seems not solely an individual choice, but also a social one, where children take into account the opinion of family members and the extent to which they perceive their peers to potentially use a social robot. The association of social norms with individual adoption and acceptance of technology has been well documented, not only in the TPB [
40], but also in more general theories dealing with the diffusion of technology (e.g., the observability dimension in Rogers’ [
23] diffusion of innovations framework). In this context, it is important to realize that we cannot understand children’s adoption of a technology as novel as social robots without zooming in on the social ramifications of its use.
Self-efficacy did not significantly contribute to children’s intention to adopt the robot at home, which contradicted our expectations and earlier research on adults [
29]. Three explanations are conceivable. First, children nowadays may become technologically savvy at a very young age [
103] and may feel confident using a technology such as a social robot. Second, at the pre-adoption stage self-efficacy may not yet play a role because it requires a deeper knowledge of a technology that children lack at this stage. Third, the children in our study, who were eight and nine years old, are not yet cognitively sufficiently advanced to realize the challenges of operating an advanced device like a social robot and equate it with a toy. As a result, TPB-based research on children’s adoption of social robots should study the potential contribution of self-efficacy also at different stages in the adoption process and with older children.
Children’s general attitude towards robots was strongly associated with children’s intention to adopt the social robot. At the pre-adoption stage, when children have not yet interacted with the robot in real-life, their beliefs about a specific robot seem to be largely based upon a general conception of robots. Practically speaking, this finding is useful because it suggests that knowing children’s general attitude towards social robots will allow for decent predictions of whether they intend to adopt a robot. None of the other distal factors proved to be influential, although their selection was both theoretically and empirically motivated. Personal factors such as children’s sex, openness and agreeableness, and anxiety towards using the robot, as well as contextual factors, such as technology density in the household and real-life and media exposure to social robots, were all unrelated to the intention to adopt a social robot.
Albeit unexpected, the many non-associations of our distal predictors with the key variables may support the ‘assumption of sufficiency,’ which posits that, according to the TPB, the only necessary predictors of intention are attitude, social norms, and self-efficacy, and that no additional constructs are needed to accurately predict this intention ([
27,
43] Still, we recommend that future researchers may include distal factors into their models. According to Ajzen [
43], it is possible to include additional predictors if several assumptions are met, for example that the predictors should be applicable to a wide range of behavior. The TPB itself assumes that demographic characteristics and personality can play a role as they may influence intention indirectly [
43].
A statistical explanation of the non-associations of our distal predictors with the key variables is that the inclusion of general attitude towards robots in the model has eliminated some of the variance of the other distal predictors (see Table
2). Most of the distal predictors that we included in the model are considered background factors, which are theorized to affect behavioral, normative, and control beliefs, which, in turn, affect attitudes, social norms, and self-efficacy. As beliefs, compared to background factors, are thus more proximally related to intention and behavior, it might be fruitful for future research to focus on children’s beliefs or cognitive schemata of social robots as these may drive their intention to adopt.
In sum, our non-findings about distal factors (except general attitudes) should not be seen as a refutation of the potential influence of these factors on children’s adoption of social robots, nor do they suggest that such factors are irrelevant in the TPB. The TPB does not specify a fixed set of distal factors. Given the novelty of the topic, we therefore had to select personal and contextual distal factors based on related research, which typically did not focus on social robots and children. As a result, several of the factors we studied may not have been precise enough to predict children’s adoption of social robots. Our study thus also calls for fundamental research on children and social robots. A promising starting point may be to focus on the role of the only significant distal predictor, general attitudes toward robots, and identify other factors that are theoretically related to these attitudes (e.g., neuroticism and robot-human likeness [
58]). In so doing, we may be able to better understand the role of general attitudes in predicting children’s adoption of social robots but also the theoretical ramifications of these attitudes and, by extension, the composition of distal factors.
5.3 Limitations and Conclusion
Our study has at least four limitations. First, our correlational, cross-sectional design does not allow for internally valid conclusions about the causality of the variables in our model. Our model was based on theoretical predictions from the TPB [
40] and many of the hypothesized relationships have theoretically a clear causal direction. Still, some caution is warranted in terms of causal interpretations of our findings. To validate the causality of our model, future research should focus on both the pre-adoption and adoption stage. Second, our study is based on children aged eight to nine, that is, children from middle childhood. Given the huge developmental differences in childhood, our findings can probably not be generalized to other developmental groups. In this context, research that compares between different developmental groups, notably between children and adults, may greatly enrich our understanding of the adoption of social robots. Third, we conducted our study in a technologically advanced, rich Western country, in which many children are confronted early on with advanced technology both at home and in school. We need more research from diverse countries to see whether our results also hold in other cultures and countries. Nevertheless, these limitations hold for the TPB in general, given that the model is population-specific (e.g., [
41]). Fourth, in our study, we focused on a behavioral
intention rather than the behavior itself. Given a potential gap between children’s intention and behavior, we should be cautious in extending our findings to
actual adoption of the social robot [
43].
To conclude, the intention to adopt a social robot seems to be mainly determined by hedonic, normative and attitudinal considerations. With social robots increasingly entering children’s homes and daily lives, it is essential to further study their adoption, as well as their acceptance in the long run. Our model may be an initial step into disentangling the complex process of domestic social robot acceptance for children.