Although chatbots are increasingly deployed in customer service to reduce the burden of human labor and sometimes replace human employees in online shopping, there remains the challenge of ensuring consumers’ service evaluation and purchase decisions after chatbot service. Anthropomorphism, referring to human-like traits exhibited by non-human entities, is considered a key principle to facilitate customers’ positive evaluation of chatbot service and purchase decisions. However, equipping chatbots with anthropomorphism should be planned and rolled out cautiously because it could be both advantages to building customer trust and disadvantages for increasing customer overload. To understand how customers process and react to chatbot anthropomorphism, this study applied Wixom and Todd’s model and social information processing theory which guide this study to examine how object-based social beliefs (i.e., chatbot warmth and chatbot competence) of anthropomorphic chatbot influence service evaluation and customer purchase by generating behavioral beliefs (i.e., trust in chatbot and chatbot overload). The research model was examined with a “lab–in–the–field” experiment of 212 samples and two scenario-based experiments of 124 samples and 232 samples. The results showed that chatbot warmth and competence had significant effects on trust in chatbot and chatbot overload. Trust in chatbot and chatbot overload further significantly impact service evaluation and then customer purchase. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

尽管聊天机器人越来越多地部署在客户服务中，以减轻人类劳动负担，有时甚至在网上购物中取代人类员工，但在聊天机器人服务后确保消费者的服务评估和购买决策仍然存在挑战。拟人化是指非人类实体表现出的类人特征，被认为是促进客户对聊天机器人服务和购买决策进行积极评价的关键原则。然而，为聊天机器人配备拟人化应该谨慎规划和推出，因为这既可能有利于建立客户信任，也有可能增加客户超载。为了了解客户如何处理和反应聊天机器人拟人化，本研究应用 Wixom 和 Todd 的模型和社会信息处理理论来指导本研究，以检验拟人化聊天机器人的基于对象的社会信念（即聊天机器人热情和聊天机器人能力）如何影响服务评估通过产生行为信念（即对聊天机器人的信任和聊天机器人过载）来吸引客户购买。该研究模型通过 212 个样本的“实验室现场”实验以及 124 个样本和 232 个样本的两个基于场景的实验进行了检验。结果表明，聊天机器人的热情和能力对聊天机器人的信任和聊天机器人过载有显着影响。对聊天机器人的信任和聊天机器人过载进一步显着影响服务评估，进而影响客户购买。讨论了理论和实践的意义。