Human Receptionist or AI-Chatbot? Trust-Based Effects on Hotel Check-In Evaluation and Purchase Responses

This research examines whether replacing a human receptionist with an AI chatbot at hotel check-in changes guests’ purchase-related responses and, more importantly, through which psychological mechanism this effect occurs. Drawing on a Stimulus-Organism-Response perspective, we conceptualize service agent type as the stimulus, trust and related internal evaluations as organismic states, and purchase intention and purchase behavior tendencies as responses. We test the model through a between-subjects scenario-based experiment comparing chatbot-based and human receptionist check-in in a five-star hotel context. Results show that the human receptionist condition generates significantly higher trust than the AI-chatbot condition. Performance expectancy and perceived quality also emerge as strong antecedents of trust. Serial mediation analyses further show that the impact of service agent type on purchase intention and purchase behavior tendencies is fully indirect: higher trust strengthens attitude toward the check-in service, attitude increases purchase intention, and purchase intention predicts behavioral tendencies such as first-choice preference and willingness to pay more. The study contributes causal evidence to the hospitality AI literature by clarifying that trust is the key lever through which frontline automation affects commercially meaningful outcomes. Managerially, the findings suggest that chatbot check-in should be designed not only for efficiency but also to signal reliability, service quality, accountability, and seamless human fallback. The paper further differentiates itself from the broader literature on service robots and AI-driven purchase intentions by focusing on a high-contact hotel check-in touchpoint and by showing that the commercial consequences of AI substitution are not direct, but operate through a trust-attitude-intention sequence that culminates in purchase behavior tendencies.