Smart voice assistant use and emotional attachment on reinforcement of filter bubble phenomenon towards the choice of acceptance of the new content: A quantitative research examining the moderating effects of brand trust and user satisfaction

The explicit use of personalisation functions by voice assistants drives more and more companies to incorporate smart assistant technologies into their products. This means that companies must contend with the appearance of personalised filter bubbles – whether it is due to the companies’ delivered content or otherwise - when it comes to facilitation of the new content via voice technologies, which might lie outside of the consumers’ personalised preferences. However, according to the discussion among scholars, voice assistant users would be willing to receive more of new content if voice assistants sounded more human. As the implementation of natural language speech into voice assistants can produce emotional bonding or friendship connection on the users. Therefore, the present study aims to offer the insights coming from empirical evidence on the phenomenon of the filter bubble and the ways emotional connections could possible reinforce filter bubble to foster the users’ willingness to accept the new content. In addition, this research explores the extent to which user satisfaction, brand trust and filter bubble would moderate the effects of voice assistant use on acceptance of the new content. By conducting an online survey, insights into the different effects between the groups were obtained. However, the findings of this study indicate that emotional attachment does not mediate the effect of voice assistant use on acceptance of the new content. It appeared that VA users experience less emotional attachment than other device users, as the voice assistant use had negative significant effect on emotional attachment. Also, voice assistant users experience less user satisfaction than device users. Brand trust had positive significant effect on emotional attachment. Yet, the most exiting finding of this research is that personalisation features of voice assistants lead to the increase of emotional attachment of voice assistant users, and emotional attachment in turn amplifies voice assistant user embeddedness in a filter bubble rather than mitigates. The both effects were positive and significant. Thus, it was found that emotional attachment is mingled with personalisation and embeddedness in a filter bubble and both leading to less acceptance of the new content. So more positive experience of voice assistant user with voice assistant makes one less likely to accept new content. The findings from this research can serve as a foundation for the future studies that aim to study the effectiveness of voice assistant use on acceptance of the new content.