Additional Option or Additional Concern? Consumer Prosocial Reactions to the Introduction of Automation Technologies
(A2026-134153)

AUTHORS

Erik Kriukov, ESCP Business School; Rhonda Hadi, University of Oxford; MICHAEL HAENLEIN, ESCP Business School/University of Liverpool Management School

ABSTRACT

Firms increasingly automate frontline services using automated agents (AA) and self-service technologies (SST). While prior research emphasizes individualistic consumer preferences, we investigate prosocial reactions to automation – specifically, how consumers infer consequences for frontline employees and evaluate the brand. Across three large-scale secondary data studies (N = 30,713), we show that introducing AA (vs. SST) elicits more negative consumer responses due to stronger perceptions of employee job threat. Planned experiments test the causal mechanism and a managerial intervention (framing technology as tool vs. actor). This research enriches the literature on consumer reactions to service automation by reconceptualising service automation as a process, identifying automated social presence as a driver of perceived employee harm, and offers guidance for strategic and communication decisions surrounding frontline automation.