What Factors Determine the Consumer Acceptance of AI-Based Services? The Case of Lithuanian Consumers

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the service sector, which is leading to changes in consumer behavior. Understanding the factors that influence consumer acceptance of AI-based services is a critical research topic in marketing. However, existing research on this topic is limited or provides mixed results. The research aims to identify the critical factors that determine consumer acceptance of AI-based services in Lithuania. Based on the results of the existing research, the study model includes seven critical factors that influence the acceptance of AI-based services, which are grouped into three categories: social-emotional (perceived anthropomorphism, social environment, and hedonic motivation), functional (perceived results and perceived efforts), and relational (trust and privacy concerns). The model also depicts the impact of AI-based service acceptance on their usage. A survey of 346 Lithuanian consumers was conducted to collect data for this study. The analysis of the survey results revealed that social environment, hedonic motivation, privacy concerns, and trust have a positive impact on consumer acceptance of AI-based services. As expected, perceived effort has a negative impact on the acceptance of these services. It was found that perceived anthropomorphism and perceived results do not have an impact on the acceptance of AI-based services. These research findings contribute to the existing studies on AI-based service consumer behavior by identifying the critical factors that influence consumer acceptance of these services in the context of a small Baltic Sea region country with a specific economic, technological, and socio-cultural context.