  Loneliness is a distressing personal experience and a growing social issue.
Social robots could alleviate the pain of loneliness, particularly for those
who lack in-person interaction. This paper investigated how the effect of
loneliness on the anthropomorphism of social robots differs by robot
appearance, and how it influences purchase intention. Participants viewed a
video of one of the three robots (machine-like, animal-like, and human-like)
moving and interacting with a human counterpart. Bootstrapped multiple
regression results revealed that although the unique effect of animal-likeness
on anthropomorphism compared to human-likeness was higher, lonely individuals'
tendency to anthropomorphize the animal-like robot was lower than that of the
human-like robot. This moderating effect remained significant after covariates
were included. Bootstrapped mediation analysis showed that anthropomorphism had
both a positive direct effect on purchase intent and a positive indirect effect
mediated by likability. Our results suggest that lonely individuals' tendency
of anthropomorphizing social robots should not be summarized into one unified
inclination. Moreover, by extending the effect of loneliness on
anthropomorphism to likability and purchase intent, this current study explored
the potential of social robots to be adopted as companions of lonely
individuals in their real life. Lastly, we discuss the practical implications
of the current study for designing social robots.
