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Virtual kitchens are a new business phenomenon, and how customers react to the new business model is still a largely unexplored topic. The purpose of this study is to examine the underlying mechanisms of consumers’ different responses to their reasoning of the new and disruptive business model of the virtual kitchen.

Based on the attribution theory and situated focus theory of power, this study conducts three online experiments to test the proposed framework. A total of 487 US residents who had prior experience with restaurant food delivery participated in the studies.

The results indicate that external attribution (vs internal attribution) and ethnic cuisine (vs mainstream cuisine) are more likely to elicit customers’ empathy and justice, leading to higher purchase intentions with virtual kitchens. A mainstream virtual kitchen is better off attributing itself to external factors. The significant effects of causal attribution and cuisine type on purchase intention only exist with powerful customers and those with high moral identity.

The results of this study provide valuable insight to virtual kitchen businesses to better position and market themselves to gain customers’ support. The findings also suggest that ethnic and mainstream restaurants should strategize their marketing communications about virtual kitchens differently.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to provide in-depth insight into the growing phenomenon of virtual kitchens. It also contributes to the extant literature on attribution theory and situated focus theory of power.

The purpose of this study is to explore robot-phobia as a source of occupational stress among hospitality employees in the context of increasing robotization in the industry.

The study sampled 321 lodging employees and 308 food service employees in the USA. An online panel company recruited the participants and administered an online survey. The study used various analytical methods, including structural modeling, t-tests and multi-group analyses.

The study results reveal that hospitality workers experience robot-phobia regardless of their sector or position. Robot-phobia causes job insecurity and stress, which increases turnover intention. These negative outcomes are more pronounced for those who interact more frequently with robots.

The study findings suggest that hospitality workers fear being replaced by robots in the near future. Therefore, hospitality organizations should offer adequate training and education on the advantages and drawbacks of robots and establish a supportive and collaborative work environment that values human–robot interaction.

This study offers new insights regarding human–robot interaction from the employee perspective by introducing the concept of robot-phobia in the hospitality workplace. A comprehensive picture of how hospitality employees confront the increasing presence of robots is provided in this study.

This study aims to offer an overview of hospitality and tourism research on artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on the industry. More specifically, this study examines hospitality and tourism AI research trends in hospitality and tourism customer service experience creation and delivery, service failure and recovery, human resources and organizational behavior. Based on the review, this study identifies the challenges and opportunities and provides directions for future studies.

A narrative synthesis approach was used to review the hospitality and tourism research on AI and its impact on various aspects of the industry.

AI and AI applications in customer service experience creation and delivery and its possible effects on employees and organizations are viewed as a double-edged sword. Although the use of AI and AI applications offers various benefits, there are also serious concerns over the ethical use of AI, the replacement of human employees by AI-powered devices, discomfort among customers and employees and trust toward AI.

The paper offers an updated holistic overview of AI and its implications in different facets of the hospitality and tourism industry. Challenges and opportunities are discussed to foster future discussions on the use of AI among scholars and industry professionals.

This paper aims to examine the phenomenon of disruptive service behavior: an act by a customer that negatively affects the service experience of other customers and to identify typology of disruptive behaviors of customers that can negatively alter the service experiences of by-standing customers.

Anecdotes of customers’ service experiences that were negatively affected by the behavior of other customers were gathered from several customer review and discussion websites using a netnographic study approach. Data were analyzed using a qualitative data analysis approach with an iterative and inductive methodologies.

The analysis produced a typology featuring seven categories of disruptive behaviors of customers: “Inattentive Parents with Naughty Kids”, “Oral Abusers”, “Outlandish Requesters”, “Hysterical shouters”, “Poor Hygiene Manners”, “Service Rule Breakers” and “Ignorant Customers”.

Using the typology developed in this study, managers and operators of hospitality businesses can identify specific customer service behaviors and develop strategies and actions to minimize the impact of those behaviors on the service experience of other customers.

Even though a great deal of attention has been given to how employees can damage customers’ service experiences, much less work has been conducted on disruptive behaviors of customers as an influential factor of service quality and satisfaction. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by developing a typology of disruptive customer behaviors.

Extending the technology acceptance model (TAM) to a new context, the purpose of this paper is to propose an integrative model of the brand of artificial intelligence-enabled voice assistants (AI-EVA) and customers’ perceptions and behavioral intentions of using AI-EVA in hotels. Moderating effects of construal levels and hotel scales were examined.

This paper adopted a mixed method approach. A qualitative and phenomenological methodology was adopted in Study 1 to explore hotel customers’ experience with AI-EVA. Study 2 applied experimental design to investigate the effects of the brand of AI-EVA and construal level on customers’ perceptions and behavioral intentions of using AI-EVA. Based on Studies 1 and 2 results, Study 3 examined how the brand of AI-EVA and hotel scale affect customers’ perceptions and behavioral intentions of using AI-EVA during hotel stays.

This research found that customers perceive a higher level of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and anthropomorphism when AI-EVA is branded (vs off-brand). Perceived usefulness positively affects customers’ intention to use and to spread positive word-of-mouth. Anxiety of using AI-enabled devices and privacy concerns inhibit customers’ intention to use AI-EVA. Anthropomorphism increases customers’ willingness to spread positive word-of-mouth. Construal level moderates the effect of the brand of AI-EVAs on perceived ease of use and anthropomorphism. Hotel scale moderates the effect of brand on perceived usefulness.

This paper is one of the first attempts to uncover and integrate different factors underlying customers’ perceptions of using AI-EVA in an extended TAM in hotel settings. This paper provides an integrative model extending the TAM to a new context by deploying a mixed-method approach across three studies.

Through a theoretical lens of psychological ownership, this study aims to investigate how technology mindfulness may stimulate metaverse tourism users’ feelings of individual psychological ownership, aesthetic value and conversational value, which in turn fosters intention to engage in prosocial behaviors.

The study used a scenario-based survey that allowed U.S.-based participants to create their own avatars and imagine using their avatars to explore heritage sites in the metaverse. Structural equality modeling was applied for data analysis.

The results from 357 valid responses indicate that technology mindfulness arouses tourists’ individual psychological ownership, aesthetic value, conversational value and prosocial behavioral intentions. The moderating role of biospheric value orientation on willingness to donate and intention to volunteer is investigated.

The research sheds light on the significance of technology mindfulness, conversational value and psychological ownership perspectives in the metaverse, which have been previously overlooked. The authors used a scenario-based survey for mental stimulation due to current metaverse technology limitations.

The study is one of the first to explore the possibility of encouraging prosocial behaviors using metaverse-facilitated technology. The research offers guidelines to engage hospitality and tourism customers in the metaverse that can blend their virtual experiences into the real world.

This study represents one of the pioneering efforts to gain an in-depth understanding of the application of metaverse in triggering prosocial behavior toward heritage sites, explained via a technology mindfulness-driven model with a psychological ownership perspective.

Building upon humans’ trichromatic vision systems, dual-process theory and halo effects, this paper aims to examine the effects of red and green color brightness of food pictures on customers’ evaluations and purchase intention of restaurant food.

The proposed hypotheses were tested across three experimental designed studies on a total of 575 participants. Multilevel analysis, analysis of variance and multivariate analysis of variance were applied for data analysis.

This paper provides empirical evidence of the effects of red brightness and green brightness on customers’ affective and cognitive evaluation of food and purchase intention in Study 1. Study 2 validates the effects of red and green brightness on food evaluation with the presence of nutrition information. Study 3 further elaborates on the halo effects of color brightness on customers’ favorable intentions to patronize a restaurant and willingness to pay for a meal in a controlled lab experiment.

One main limitation is that this paper focuses on unveiling the role of color brightness and does not consider other picture properties, which opens an avenue for future research.

This paper includes implications for food promotion and management of customers’ experience via food pictures.

This paper is one of the first attempts to reveal the effects of red and green brightness of food pictures on customers’ food evaluation and food consumption behavioral intentions.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are a key player in the food services and restaurants sector; thus, the aim of this work consists in studying the previous research on ICTs in food services and restaurants in the context of tourism and hospitality through a systematic literature review.

The systematic literature review is performed on full papers published in journals included in the Journal Citation Report of the WoS in the category of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism. A total of 165 articles from 28 journals are analyzed, following different criteria, such as the research methods, perspectives, statistical techniques, geographical focus, topics, technologies, authors and universities.

The restaurant sector is more and more based on the creation of experiences and ICTs, through their multiple possibilities, can undoubtedly contribute to adding value to the simple meal and create and recreate experiences to attract and retain customers who are increasingly sophisticated and hooked on ICTs. ICTs are basic for managers taking decision at the highest level in food services and restaurants, so ICTs should not be seen as a technical tool but as an essential element for top management.

This paper examined articles from very well-known tourism and hospitality journals, leaving aside others as well as different publication formats such as books or papers presented at conferences.

A significant contribution made with this paper is the availability of a list of topics in the context of ICTs in food services and restaurants. These topics are classified into three areas (Consumers, Suppliers and Environment and Tendencies) that can serve as a future research framework. The paper also provides useful information to restaurant managers about ICTs, to researchers for their future projects and to academics for their courses.

This study aims to identify articles examining human-robot interaction and the effects of robotic systems on employment.

In this research, electronic searches were performed for articles published between 2000 and 2022 in Emerald, Springer, PubMed, Science Direct, Wiley and Google Scholar. In the searches of robotic systems with keywords such as “motivation, job satisfaction, job loss, performance, job giving,” 5 quantitative and 5 qualitative studies were included in the systematic review. The selected research was conducted using the Johanna Briggs Analytical Cross-Sectional Studies Checklist from the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical evaluation lists and the JBI Critical Appraisal Checklist for Qualitative Research, depending on their type. The included studies are mostly on employee-robot collaboration.

Although the majority of the articles examined in this study are included in keywords or titles, it is determined that there is a gap in descriptive quantitative studies in the literature on the effects of employee-robot collaboration, robotic systems and robotic systems on variables such as motivation, job satisfaction, job loss, performance and employment, although they do not mention a framework that directly investigates human-robot interaction and the effects of robotic systems on employment.

There are several limitations in this study. One of them is that, although the databases are comprehensively scanned, only studies published in English between 2000 and 2022 are included in the systematic review. Another limitation is the heterogeneity between studies.

As a result of the authors’ findings, the practical effects of the research are reflected as follows: It serves as a guide for future studies to fill the gap in the field, especially for academics and researchers working in the field of social sciences on robotic systems and intelligent automations. In addition to the qualitative studies on this subject, there is a need for the use of robotic systems in the field of human resources and management and quantitative studies with more sample sizes, especially at the corporate (firms) and individual (employees) level. Considering that the number of studies on this subject is very insufficient, this research is important in terms of shedding light on future studies.

The authors believe that the impact of robotic systems on employment is one of the few conceptual articles that systematically examines 6 dimensions (job satisfaction, performance, job loss, employment, motivation, employment).