Not a good judge of talent: the influence of subjective socioeconomic status on AI aversion

The current research constructs a framework to understand how subjective socioeconomic status (SES) affects consumers’ AI aversion in the evaluation context. Three experiments show that subjective SES has a negative impact on consumers’ willingness to accept AI evaluation. Consumers with higher subjective SES are more likely to resist AI evaluation because they perceive that AI agents are not as capable as human agents of identifying their talents. This effect is moderated by the agent type–the impact of subjective SES on resistance to the AI agent is attenuated when the AI agent is non-evaluative. This research is of great significance in enriching research on improving AI services efficiency across various social classes.