“I was so scared I quit”: Uncanny valley effects of robots’ human-likeness on employee fear and industry turnover intentions

Because of the increased usage of service robots in the hospitality and tourism industries, researchers and practitioners are interested in learning to facilitate interactions between employees and service robots. However, there is little information on how service robots’ humanlike appearance affects employee emotions and industry turnover intentions. Drawing upon uncanny valley theory, a quasi-scenario-based experiment was conducted using four types of service robots. After watching a video on one of the service robots, participants rated perceived human-likeness, tech savviness, fear of robots, and industry turnover intentions. This study reports that perceived human-likeness has an inverted-U shaped nonlinear relationship with employees’ fear of robots, moderated by employees’ tech-savviness. The result further indicates that the fear of robots is positively related to industry turnover intentions. Most research hypotheses lend support to the uncanny valley theory and have practical implications for the design and implementation of service robots in hospitality and tourism workplaces.