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Description
To improve disaster relief and crisis communication, public institutions (PIs) such as administrations rely on automation and technology. As one example, the use of conversational agents (CAs) has increased. To ensure that information and advisories are taken up seriously, it is important for PIs to be perceived as a trusted source and a trustworthy point of contact. In this study, we therefore examine how CAs can be applied by PIs to, on the one hand, automate their crisis communication and, on the other hand, maintain or even increase their perceived trustworthiness. We developed two CAs – one equipped with ethical cues in order to be perceived more trustworthy and one without such cues – and started to conduct an online experiment to evaluate the effects. Our first results indicate that applying ethical principles such as fairness, transparency, security and accountability have a positive effect on the perceived trustworthiness of the CA.
Recommended Citation
Hofeditz, Lennart; Mirbabaie, Milad; Erle, Lukas; Knoßalla, Eileen; and Timm, Lara, "Automating Crisis Communication in Public Institutions – Towards Ethical Conversational Agents That Support Trust Management" (2022). Wirtschaftsinformatik 2022 Proceedings. 3.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/wi2022/e_government/e_government/3
Automating Crisis Communication in Public Institutions – Towards Ethical Conversational Agents That Support Trust Management
To improve disaster relief and crisis communication, public institutions (PIs) such as administrations rely on automation and technology. As one example, the use of conversational agents (CAs) has increased. To ensure that information and advisories are taken up seriously, it is important for PIs to be perceived as a trusted source and a trustworthy point of contact. In this study, we therefore examine how CAs can be applied by PIs to, on the one hand, automate their crisis communication and, on the other hand, maintain or even increase their perceived trustworthiness. We developed two CAs – one equipped with ethical cues in order to be perceived more trustworthy and one without such cues – and started to conduct an online experiment to evaluate the effects. Our first results indicate that applying ethical principles such as fairness, transparency, security and accountability have a positive effect on the perceived trustworthiness of the CA.