The Impact of Long-term Interactions with a Digital Voice Agent on Trust and Roles Within a Household

<p>Digital voice assistants (DVAs) provide information and support to users in a household across a wide variety of tasks. While they are part of a social system in the household, earlier research has largely ignored how DVAs impact this system. This study investigates how long-term DVA usage affects trust and roles of the users and their household. Using a multi-methods approach, we measured behavioural and self-reported trust, mapped the dynamic position of a DVA in the household, and the impact on the roles of household members over time across three experiments (combined n &amp;gt; 250; all DVA owners). In Experiment 1 and 2, participants completed an Information Dilemma Task, ranking whom they would be more likely to approach from their household (including their DVA) for dilemmas across domains (entertainment, social, domestic, and knowledge). They rated how much they trust the agents’ responses (Experiment 1) or indicated their general trust of the agent (Experiment 2). Results showed that the DVA was predominantly approached and trusted in the knowledge, but not social domain regardless of DVA ownership duration. However, we observed a decrease in trust in the DVA over time. We also found that approaching behaviour of other roommates changed across ownership-time: a first indication of changing dynamics in the household with the presence of a DVA. In Experiment 3, we interviewed short- and long-term users of DVAs. This qualitative approach provided converging evidence that DVA-owners, although occasionally personifying the device, use and trust it mainly in a functional manner and not a social one, with a small indication of prolonged usage impacting the dynamics in the household. While task measures did not point directly at an objective impact of ownership time, the interview data suggested a subjective experience of ownership time. In sum, while DVAs are mainly used for utilitarian reasons, their effect on household dynamics suggests its potential of reshaping roles in the household in the future.</p>