The Impact of Default Options on Tourist Intention Post Tourism Chatbot Failure: The Role of Service Recovery and Emoticon

Abstract

Chatbot service failures are inevitable in tourism and hospitality, how chatbot service recovery retains tourists is an issue that cannot be ignored. The nudging effect of default options on consumers' behavior has been demonstrated in marketing. Whether default options can be as a powerful tool for service failure recovery is underexplored. Thus, this study aims to explore whether the default option can improve tourists' willingness to continue using the chatbot after service failure. Hypotheses were tested using three experiments, results showed that the opt-out default option can increase higher tourists' continuous use intention by decreasing tourists' affective effort. This effect is moderated by service recovery and emoticon. Specifically, opt-out default option is more effective to improve continuous usage intention when using informational help and pleading emoticon. These findings enriched theories on chatbot service failure and recovery and provide insight for default options using in chatbot under tourism and hospitality industry.