Consumer Acceptance of High-Autonomy AI Assistants Is Driven by Perceived Benefits in Online Shopping Settings Characterized by Scarcity
Source: Psychology & Marketing (Frank, Folwarczny, Otterbring) · 2025-10-28 · publisher abstract only
Across one behavioral field experiment and four controlled online experiments with almost 2000 US and UK shoppers, the current research investigates the role of perceived benefits in driving consumer acceptance of highly autonomous artificial intelligence (AI), while also examining whether contextual factors, such as scarcity, influence this relationship. A Google Ads campaign revealed higher click‐through rates for high‐autonomy (vs. low‐autonomy) AI shopping assistants (Study 1). Scarcity amplified the perceived advantages of high‐autonomy AI (Studies 2A‐3B), whereas perceived benefits emerged as a central driver of adoption intentions of highly autonomous AI in scarcity‐related contexts (Studies 3A‐B). These findings replicate across study designs, settings, and outcomes, leveraging a novel contribution to the literature by shifting the focus from consumers’ personal sense of power to perceived benefits as pivotal drivers of AI acceptance. Managerially, the results suggest that firms can boost adoption of high‐autonomy AI by emphasizing benefits, particularly experiential ones, in marketing communications efforts of AI systems, especially in settings characterized by scarcity.
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Research framings built by reading the notes related to this paper — the questions it feeds into.
How should control and autonomy be allocated in human-AI collaboration? What systematic biases emerge in AI shopping agents' decision-making?- Why has marketing research neglected prompting behavior and relational dynamics with AI?
- Why do weekly AI users prefer brand-built agents over AI platforms?
- How does shopping task delegation differ from routine administrative delegation?
- What conflicts exist between vendor incentives and objective consumer research findings?
- Does visible transaction history reduce or increase consumer anxiety about AI purchases?
- Does preference articulation cost explain caution about full purchase delegation?
- Can hybrid shopping journeys combine manual inspection with agentic refinement?
- What operationalizes decision satisfaction when consumers use voice assistants?
- Does the efficiency-autonomy trade-off apply beyond utilitarian shopping tasks?
- Do scarcity conditions change which consumers prefer autonomous assistants?
- When do consumers overtrust AI agents built to represent their own preferences?
- Why do safeguards matter more than AI capability for consumer adoption?
- Does stated trust in surveys predict actual delegated purchasing behavior?
- Do consumers who trust AI agents understand their actual limitations?
- What percentage of shoppers constitute the super-truster segment exactly?
- What safeguards beyond sign-off do consumers want from autonomous shopping agents?
- Does stated trust in brands predict actual delegation of agentic commerce?
- Why do consumers resist letting AI control payment authority directly?
- Can platforms use lower AI fidelity to nudge consumers toward adoption?
- Why might users over-trust preference agents despite rational adoption hesitation?
- Do low-involvement purchases differ from complex decisions in delegating to AI?
- Does trust or benefit perception predict AI adoption across different domains?