Youn-Kyung Kim’s research while affiliated with University of Tennessee at Knoxville and other places

The manifestation of “Artificial Social Intelligence (ASI)” stands as a cornerstone of a social robot system development that influences users' interactions and experiences overall in the ever-evolving landscape of user-centric HumanRobot Interaction (HRI). Recognizing the pivotal need to evaluate a socially interactive system accurately, this paper presents a unidimensional-scale measurement of ASI that measures a focused dimension of users' perceived social intelligence in a robot, minimizes participants' fatigue to generate higher response rates, maximizes the ability to conduct user-friendly research, and enhances the ease of interpreting the results that makes it more accessible to a diverse audience. Employing a cross-disciplinary literature review, personal interviews (n = 14), and large-scale surveys (n = 2,358) consisting of its five video-based stimuli data collection process, this study adhered meticulously to numerous scale measurement procedures to develop an “ASI Lite-Scale” and validated it with multiple tests, including Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), and Exploratory Graph Analysis (EGA), assessment tests of convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity, and multi-group measurement invariance analysis to establish its robustness and ability to be generalized. This study of ASI Lite-Scale provides a structured scale development manual to help fellow researchers employ this methodology and reach a wider readership, thereby fostering the development of validated scale measurements in the field of HRI

The existing literature examines VIs' utilitarian, personal, and relational traits, but a gap exists in interface design understanding. This study employs avatar marketing and ambivalence theories to explore how VIs' design elements (VI's varying form realism and behavioral realism design) induce ambivalent emotions (eeriness and coolness) and impact VI marketing performance (follow and purchase intentions). Two experimental studies were conducted, using ANCOVA, multiple regression, and PROCESS macro analyses. In Study 1, utilizing contemporary VIs from the market, it was revealed that a VI exhibiting mid (vs. low) form realism triggered heightened perceptions of both eeriness and coolness, with these effects being magnified under the condition of high (vs. low) behavioral realism. In Study 2, using VIs generated through the StyleGAN AI technique, it was validated that those with high (vs. low) form realism were associated with decreased perceptions of eeriness and increased coolness, particularly when combined with high (vs. low) behavioral realism. Additionally, our findings emphasized the negative impact of eeriness and the positive influence of coolness on VI performance outcomes. In summary, our study reveals the significant role of VI interface designs in VI marketing performance, highlighting consumers' mixed emotions as crucial mediators in this context. Additionally, our findings highlight the negative impact of eeriness and the positive influence of coolness on VI performance. Its primary contribution is uncovering VIs' interface designs as significant factors in VI marketing performance, while recognizing con-sumers' ambivalent emotions as vital mediators in this relationship.

Conventional meat production has become a force of environmental damage, but global meat consumption is predicted to continue increasing. Therefore, the technology of cultivated meat is undergoing rapid development. The current study explores what factors explain U.S. consumers’ intention to purchase cultivated meat as a sustainable substitute for conventional meat by applying a dual-factor model. A total of 410 completed responses were received from a nationwide survey. Structural equation modeling was conducted to test the model and hypotheses. The results showed that physical health, animal welfare, and food quality significantly encouraged consumer acceptance of cultivated meat as a sustainable substitute for conventional meat. Food technology neophobia significantly inhibits the acceptance of cultivated meat, whereas unnaturalness did not show an impact on cultivated meat acceptance. Furthermore, the acceptance of cultivated meat as a sustainable substitute significantly enhanced consumers’ purchase intention. The findings inform practitioners about promoting cultivated meat in that marketers should emphasize the benefits of cultivated meat with health, animal welfare, food quality, and the environment. While technological language should be used carefully to avoid food technology neophobia, it is also essential to educate consumers on the science of cultivated meat in order for them to understand its benefits to sustainability.