To Partner with Human or Robot? Designing Service Coproduction Processes for Willingness to Pay More

Across two studies, this research presents a novel extension to the service coproduction literature, demonstrating when and why consumers with low- versus high-innovativeness tendencies are willing to pay more to coproduce hospitality and tourism services. Findings suggest that, in in-person coproduction settings, low-innovativeness consumers are willing to pay more to coproduce (vs. not) with human employees, while high-innovativeness consumers are willing to pay more to coproduce (vs. not) with robots. Such effects were attenuated in tech-enabled remote coproduction settings, where only high-innovativeness consumers were willing to pay more to coproduce. PROCESS analyses further revealed that self-competence mediated the conditional effect of coproduction involvement on willingness to pay more. In support of our theoretical framework, we demonstrated that lowering the challenging level of the coproduction task increased (decreased) low- (high-) innovativeness consumers’ willingness to pay more for coproduction involvement. These findings offer notable theoretical and managerial implications.