Feeling understood by AI: How empathy shapes trust and influences patronage intentions in conversational AI

Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being integrated into customer service settings, with some AI now communicating empathetically in interactions. The impact of such empathetic displays on patronage intentions towards the AI however remains unclear. This research thus aimed to investigate the effect of empathetic communication through a conversational AI on consumer trust across competence- and benevolence-dimensions and on patronage intentions towards it after being provided with recommendations through said AI. Hence, two versions of a conversational AI via means of GPT-4 were trained: empathetic and non-empathetic. 300 UK residents were recruited to partake in a survey, in which they were presented with a screen recording of an interaction with one of the AI’s. The findings indicate that empathetic communication significantly increases perceived benevolence, which positively impacts patronage intentions. However, no significant effect was found on perceived competence. Notably, independent of empathetic communication competence proved to be a more influential driver of patronage intentions than benevolence, emphasizing the importance of high functionality in AI interactions.