ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1668633
This article is part of the Research TopicReimagining roles and identity in the era of human - AI collaborationView all 8 articles
Are You Willing to Forgive Generative AI Doctors? Trust Repair After Failures in Online Health Consultation Services
Provisionally accepted
- 1Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China
- 2Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang, China
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While generative AI doctors are increasingly used in online health consultation services, research on trust repair following service failures remains limited. We examined how attribution style, social support, and anthropomorphism influence individuals' trust repair and behavioral intention. A total of 512 participants were recruited to take part in a between-subjects experiment with a 2 (internal vs. external attribution) × 2 (informational vs. emotional support) × 2 (anthropomorphism vs. non-anthropomorphism) design. The results revealed that participants exposed to internal attribution, emotional support, or anthropomorphism conditions reported higher levels of trust repair. Anthropomorphism influences the effectiveness of attribution style and social support in repairing trust in GAI doctors. Moreover, an interesting interaction was observed between attribution style and social support: when the GAI doctor used internal attribution, informational support was more effective; under external attribution, emotional support proved more effective. In addition, the effect of social support on behavioral intention was fully mediated by trust repair. These findings offer practical implications for optimizing the design of GAI doctors, enhancing communication and collaboration between GAI doctors and users, and ultimately strengthening the resilience of AI-based health consultation services.
Keywords: Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI), attribution style, social support, Anthropomorphism, trust repair, online health consultation services (OHCSV)
Received: 18 Jul 2025; Accepted: 09 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Luo and Yin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shujun Luo, luoshujun@jxufe.edu.cn
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