Award Date

August 2023

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

William F. Harrah College of Hospitality

First Committee Member

Cass Shum

Second Committee Member

Billy Bai

Third Committee Member

Renata Fernandes Guzzo

Fourth Committee Member

Robert Rippee

Fifth Committee Member

Marcus Rothenberger

Number of Pages

163

Abstract

The hospitality industry's high turnover rates and labor costs motivate hospitality organizations to adopt service robots. To increase overall service quality and service performance in the hospitality industry, service robots are developed with more advanced communication features, such as web cameras and microphones. These communication features allow the service robots to have conversations and record surrounding environments. However, these communication features also enable organizations to record employees’ private conversations and behaviors at work, presenting privacy concerns for employees. Drawing from the watching-eye effects, this thesis examines the effect of service robots’ communication functions (i.e., camera and microphone) on hospitality frontline employees. The watching-eye effects depict people experiencing uneasy feelings when they are being watched constantly by the social others in society, which could trigger their privacy concerns. Two between-subject scenario-based quasi-experiments tested the effects of service robots’ communication functions on employees' paranoia and anxiety via the mediating roles of employee privacy concerns. Additionally, this study examined if tech-savviness can strengthen the impact of service robots’ communication functions on privacy concerns. The results show that employees’ privacy concerns are positively associated with their paranoia and anxiety. The supplementary analysis also provides support to the effects of two alternative mediators on the two psychological outcomes. Lastly, theoretical and practical implications have been discussed.

Keywords

anxiety; communication functions; paranoia; privacy concerns; service robots

Disciplines

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Robotics | Work, Economy and Organizations

File Format

pdf

File Size

1670 KB

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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Available for download on Thursday, August 15, 2030


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