The Effects of Anthropomorphism of Government Q&A Robot on Users’ Perceived Government Trust

Government services have the characteristics of seriousness and authority that distinguish them from commercial services, and the application of anthropomorphism may strengthen the public's stereotypical impression of the government, cause negative attitudes towards the government, and reduce the credibility of the government if the application of anthropomorphism is completely copied from the experience in the commercial field, so it is necessary to explore the application of anthropomorphism of the government Q&A robot and its relationship with the government trust. With the level of anthropomorphism as the core, we select four influencing variables, namely, government affinity perception, service result valence, authoritarianism obeys personality, and government trust, formulate research hypotheses and construct an empirical research model, and conduct one pre-experiment and three formal experiments using the method of contextual manipulation experiments. The experimental results show that the anthropomorphism degree of the government Q&A robot positively affects government trust; government affinity perception plays a mediating role in the above process; service result valence moderates the relationship between the anthropomorphism degree of the government Q&A robot and government trust; and authoritarianism obeys personality moderates the relationship between the anthropomorphism degree of the government Q&A robot and government cognitive trust, but does not moderate the relationship between the anthropomorphism degree and government emotional trust.