| dc.description.abstract | Digital voice agents (DVAs) aid in the task to provide information for the user and while they are part of a social system, earlier research has not analysed or ignored how the DVA impacts social systems. This study researches in what way long-term usage of a DVA affects trust and roles of the user and associated household. The assumption is that DVAs impact trust and roles within a household from the user toward the DVA, but also from the user toward other household members. Using a multi-methods approach, two experiments are performed to measure to what extent the DVA has an impact on the social system. Specifically, it is tested to what extent the social systems are impacted by the DVA on the level of trust and roles (experiment 1) and on the level of relationships within the household (experiment 2). During the first experiment, the roles and level of trust are examined with dilemma tasks where participants (n = 75) are asked to order their household members and DVA from who they would approach first to last. These dilemmas were categorized between different domains
(knowledge, social, domestic, entertaining). Afterwards, participants were asked to rate their trust in the answers from the others. Results from a mixed effect repeated measures ANOVA showed that the level of trust and the roles are influenced by an interaction of agent and domain. The level of trust is also dependent on the order in which the agent is placed, with the agent being chosen first if the level of trust is high. In the second experiment, the impact of the DVA on households, relationships, trust, and roles was analysed more in-depth. Participants (n = 14) were interviewed about their DVA and their household. The results found no change in trust from the impact of the DVA. An effect on roles and relationships within the household was found, especially within the group that owned the DVA for longer, which indicated that changes in roles and relationships can come over time. Together, these results suggest that the DVA does not impact inter-relational trust, but does affect the roles of the user and associated household. The findings point to an effect that develops over time. | |
