Bots of Trust - An Interdisciplinary Discourse

The interdisciplinary study critically examines how citizens’ interactions with Conversational Agents such as chatbots and voice bots shape trust in public organisations. Four studies aligned with trust dimensions will be conducted. These studies examine key trust concepts, identify trust markers in human-bot dialogues, conduct experiments centred on human-bot relationships, and investigate the role of CAs in the citizen journey through digital services. The research will be closely executed with potential partners in the public sector, to gather data, show how interactions with conversational agents can be improved and to better understand trust in the context of conversational agents. One of the results is to provide them with guidelines or ideas about how a chatbot influences accessible and inclusive communication for these organisations.

Researcher

Rhied Al-Othmani, PhD student

Lectoraat Marketing & Customer Experience, Knowledge Centre Digital Business & Media, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences

Academic supervisors

Dr. Gerrita van der Veen (HU), Prof. Dr. Nanna Verhoeff (UU), Dr. Dennis Nguyen (UU)

Grant funding agency; (co-)funding (non-)academic partners

NWO.The study has further been recommended by the Municipality of Utrecht, YDigital & Infomedics. 

More information 

Read more here.