Chatbots in Airport Customer Service—Exploring Use Cases and Technology Acceptance

Abstract

Throughout the last decade, chatbots have gained widespread adoption across various industries, including healthcare, education, business, e-commerce, and entertainment. These types of artificial, usually cloud-based, agents have also been used in airport customer service, although there has been limited research concerning travelers’ perspectives on this rather techno-centric approach to handling inquiries. Consequently, the goal of the presented study was to tackle this research gap and explore potential use cases for chatbots at airports, as well as investigate travelers’ acceptance of said technology. We employed an extended version of the Technology Acceptance Model considering Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Trust, and Perceived Enjoyment as predictors of Behavioral Intention, with Affinity for Technology as a potential moderator. A total of n=191 travelers completed our survey. The results show that Perceived Usefulness, Trust, Perceived Ease of Use, and Perceived Enjoyment positively correlate with the Behavioral Intention to use a chatbot for airport customer service inquiries, with Perceived Usefulness showing the highest impact. Travelers’ Affinity for Technology, on the other hand, does not seem to have any significant effect.

Keywords

• chatbots
• airport customer service
• technology acceptance