What Influences the Perceived Trust of a Voice-Enabled Smart Home System: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Contemporarily, almost all the global IT giants have aimed at the smart home industry and made an active strategic business layout. As the early-stage and entry-level product of the voice-enabled smart home industry, the smart speakers have been going through rapid development and rising fierce market competition globally in recent years. China, one of the most populous and largest markets in the world, has tremendous business potential in the smart home industry. The market sales of smart speakers in China have gone through rapid growth in the past three years. However, the market penetration rate of related smart home devices and equipment still stays extremely low and far from mass adoption. Moreover, the market sales of smart speakers have also entered a significant slowdown and adjustment period since 2020. Chinese consumers have moved from early impulsive consumption to a rational consumption phase about this early-stage smart home product. Trust in the marketing field is considered an indispensable component of all business transactions, which plays a crucial role in adopting new technologies. This study explores the influencing factors of Chinese users’ perceived trust in the voice-enabled smart home systems, uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to analyze the interaction mechanism between different variables, and establishes a perceived trust model through 475 valid samples. The model includes six variables: system quality, familiarity, subjective norm, technology optimism, perceived enjoyment, and perceived trust. The result shows that system quality is the essential influence factor that impacts all other variables and could significantly affect the perceived trust. Perceived enjoyment is the most direct influence variable affected by system quality, subjective norm, and technology optimism, and it positively affects the perceived trust in the end. The subjective norm is one of the most distinguishing variables for Chinese users, since China has a collectivist consumption culture. People always expect their behavior to meet social expectations and standards to avoid criticism and acquire social integration. Therefore, policy guidance, authoritative opinions, and people with important reference roles will significantly affect consumers’ perceived trust and purchase intention. Familiarity and technology optimism are important influential factors that will have an indirect impact on the perceived trust. The related results of this study can help designers, practitioners, and researchers of the smart home industry produce products and services with higher perceived trust to improve consumers’ adoption and acceptance so that the market penetration rate of related products and enterprises could be increased, and the maturity and development of the voice-enabled smart home industry could be promoted.

Services on Platform Ecosystems in the Smart Home 2.0 Era: Elements Influencing Consumers’ Value Perception for Smart Home Products

“…The estimated results show that the interaction effect (0.564) is greater than the modularization effect (0.277). In order to test the reliability of SEM results, we referred to previous studies about smart homes that used SEM method [15,19]. Therefore, we selected three indicators to test the results of SEM.…”

“…In previous studies, research on the smart home mainly focused on the impact of smart home products on consumers, or contributed to the development of smart home products by studying consumers' needs [14][15][16]. There have been studies which focused on certain components of the smart home [16,17].…”

“…However, there is no comprehensive research from the perspective of platform ecosystem elements. Taking consumers as the research object, the research methods are to collect data through questionnaires' survey for factor analysis and using the SEM to analyze the data [15,19].…”

“…In recent years, smart homes have not only focused on energy saving but also on the compatibility and development of intelligent systems [15,19,23]. Smart home technology makes it easier for people to support users to detect and control home devices, thereby improving the quality of life [24].…”

Developing a Behavior Change Framework for Pandemic Prevention and Control in Public Spaces in China

“…In addition, it is worth noting that subjective norms can have particularly significant effects in the Chinese context. The main reason is that collectivism is an important part of Chinese culture, meaning that the Chinese may be easily influenced by social policies and public views [59]. Under the current "nationwide anti-pandemic" circumstance, everyone in China assumes responsibility for following social control measures for pandemic prevention and control.…”