Social isolation is one of the negative consequences of a pandemic like COVID-19. Social isolation and loneliness are not only experienced by older adults, but also by younger people who live alone and cannot communicate with others or get involved in social situations as they used to. In such situations, social companion robots might have the potential to reduce social isolation and increase well-being. However, society's perception of social robots has not always been positive. In this paper, we conducted two online experiments with 102 and 132 participants during the self isolation periods of COVID-19 (May-June 2020 and January 2021), to study how COVID-19 has affected people's perception of the benefits of a social robot. Our results showed that a change caused by COVID-19, as well as having an older relative who lived alone or at a care center during the pandemic significantly and positively affected people's perception of social robots, as companions, and that the feeling of loneliness can drive the purchase of a social robot. The second study replicated the results of the first study. We also discuss the effects of Big 5 personality traits on the likelihood to purchase a social robot, as well as on participants' general attitude towards COVID-19 and adapting to the pandemic.
翻译:社会孤立是COVID-19(COVID-19)(2020年5月至6月和2021年1月20日至21日)等大流行病的消极后果之一。社会孤立和孤独不仅发生在老年人身上,而且发生在独居、无法与他人交流或无法像过去那样参与社会生活的年轻人身上。在这种情况下,社会伴侣机器人可能具有减少社会孤立和增加福利的潜力。然而,社会对社会机器人的看法并不总是积极的。在本文件中,我们在COVID-19(COVID-19)(2020年5月至6月和2021年1月)的自我孤立期间与102和132名参与者进行了两次在线实验。我们研究了COVID-19(CVI-19)如何影响人们对社会机器人好处的认识。我们的结果表明,COVI-19(CVI-19)带来的变化,以及该流行病中独居或处于护理中心的老年亲属对人们的社会机器人作为伴侣的看法产生了重大和积极的影响,而孤独感可以驱动购买社会机器人。第二项研究重复了第一项研究的结果。我们还讨论了五大个人格特征对购买社会机器人的可能性的影响,以及改变CVI(CVI)的总体态度。