My doctor is an avatar! The effect of anthropomorphism and emotional receptivity on individuals' intention to use digital-based healthcare services

Alongside teleconsulting platforms, existing digital-based healthcare services propose automated solutions such\r\nas medical chatbots to interact with patients. Nevertheless, previous research stress their lack of human-like\r\ninteractions delaying implementation. The advent of Metaverse may fill this gap by “catapulting” patients and\r\ndoctors into a parallel virtual reality made up of avatars where interactions are as similar as those in the real\r\nworld. By leveraging on a sample of 689 participants to an international experimental study, this paper investigates\r\nthe effect of the human-like interactions (manipulated as low in case of medical chatbots vs high in\r\ncase of doctors’ avatars in the Metaverse) on the individuals’ intention to use such digital-based healthcare\r\nservices. We analyze the relationship through the perceived anthropomorphism mediating the two options.\r\nMoreover, by considering the peculiarities of the doctor-patient relationship resulting not only from professionalism\r\nbut also from social interactions, we analyze the moderating effect of emotional receptivity. Results\r\nshow that higher level human-like interactions (i.e., doctors’ avatars in the Metaverse) positively influences\r\nindividuals’ intention to use such healthcare service via the effect of perceived anthropomorphism. Moreover,\r\nsuch effect is significant only among individuals who exhibit higher level of emotional receptivity.