ArticleJMIR formative research2023
The Effects of Expressing Empathy/Autonomy Support Using a COVID-19 Vaccination Chatbot: Experimental Study in a Sample of Belgian Adults.
Article in JMIR formative research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effectiveness of Communication Competence in AI Conversational Agents for Health: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Stakeholder Experiences With the Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine Chatbot as a Complementary Capacity-Building Tool for Frontline Health Workers in India: Qualitative Study.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- The Impact of Chatbot Response Strategies and Emojis Usage on Customers' Purchase Intention: The Mediating Roles of Psychological Distance and Performance Expectancy.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Autonomy support in telehealth: an evolutionary concept analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2025Review
- Chatbots and COVID-19: Taking Stock of the Lessons Learned.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- The Effects of Expressing Empathy/Autonomy Support Using a COVID-19 Vaccination Chatbot: Experimental Study in a Sample of Belgian Adults.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundChatbots are increasingly used to support COVID-19 vaccination programs. Their persuasiveness may depend on the conversation-related context.
objectiveThis study aims to investigate the moderating role of the conversation quality and chatbot expertise cues in the effects of expressing empathy/autonomy support using COVID-19 vaccination chatbots.
methodsThis experiment with 196 Dutch-speaking adults living in Belgium, who engaged in a conversation with a chatbot providing vaccination information, used a 2 (empathy/autonomy support expression: present vs absent) × 2 (chatbot expertise cues: expert endorser vs layperson endorser) between-subject design. Chatbot conversation quality was assessed through actual conversation logs. Perceived user autonomy (PUA), chatbot patronage intention (CPI), and vaccination intention shift (VIS) were measured after the conversation, coded from 1 to 5 (PUA, CPI) and from -5 to 5 (VIS).
resultsThere was a negative interaction effect of chatbot empathy/autonomy support expression and conversation fallback (CF; the percentage of chatbot answers "I do not understand" in a conversation) on PUA (PROCESS macro, model 1, B=-3.358, SE 1.235, t
conclusionsThe findings suggest that expressing empathy/autonomy support using a chatbot may harm its evaluation and persuasiveness when the chatbot fails to answer its users' questions. The paper adds to the literature on vaccination chatbots by exploring the conditional effects of chatbot empathy/autonomy support expression. The results will guide policy makers and chatbot developers dealing with vaccination promotion in designing the way chatbots express their empathy and support for user autonomy.
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