Research on Behavioral Intention and Use Behavior of Youth Group Concerning "AI Partner" Based on UTAUT

Abstract

“AI partner”, a chatbot, has a significantly increasing impact on society and relationship. Given limited research, the user group, the use behavior and the behavioral intention regarding “AI partner” are studied in this paper. 571 valid questionnaires in total are collected. On the basis of UTAUT, the research hypotheses are developed from the perspective of HCR theory. The influencing factors are included in seven specific indicators, such as Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), social influence (SI), privacy risk perception, self-disclosure, loneliness and boredom tendency. And a structural equation model is constructed.  Except privacy risk perception, the other variables have positive correlation with the behavioral intention. The higher the privacy risk perception, the lower the behavioral intention. And the behavioral intention, loneliness and boredom are positively correlated with the use behavior. In addition, it is found that marital status and educational background have a great influence on use behavior. For example, the divorced, single people with no partner and users with primary school degree, master degree and junior high school degree have better use behavior. The new theoretical integration model provides guidance for privacy protection, reference for legislation, and data support for debugging chatbots. However, the dimensions of the selected influencing factors are small, which can be further expanded to enrich the related research.