AI-enabled investment advice: will users buy it?

• Main Authors: Chua, Alton Yeow Kuan, Pal, Anjan, Banerjee, Snehasish
• Other Authors: Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Social sciences::Communication; AI-Based Recommendation; Decision Sciences
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/163216
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The objective of this paper is to develop and empirically validate a conceptual model that explains individuals' behavioral intention to accept AI-based recommendations as a function of attitude toward AI, trust, perceived accuracy and uncertainty level. The conceptual model was tested through a between-participants experiment using a simulated AI-enabled investment recommendation system. A total of 368 participants were randomly and evenly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions, one depicting low-uncertainty investment recommendation involving blue-chip stocks while the other depicting high-uncertainty investment recommendation involving penny stocks. Results show that attitude toward AI was positively associated with behavioral intention to accept AI-based recommendations, trust in AI, and perceived accuracy of AI. Furthermore, uncertainty level moderated how attitude, trust and perceived accuracy varied with behavioral intention to accept AI-based recommendations. When uncertainty was low, a favorable attitude toward AI seemed sufficient to promote reliance on automation. However, when uncertainty was high, a favorable attitude toward AI was a necessary but no longer sufficient condition for AI acceptance. Thus, the paper contributes to the human-AI interaction literature by not only shedding light on the underlying psychological mechanism of how users decide to accept AI-enabled advice but also adding to the scholarly understanding of AI recommendation systems in tasks that call for intuition in high involvement services.