A Cross-cultural Investigation on Attitudes Towards Social Robots: Iranian and Chinese University Students

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the study of robotics in academic contexts; however, little attention has been given to the investigation of the effects of social and cultural backgrounds in people's receptivity of robots, especially across nations. To this end, the present study is a cross-cultural exploration on the Iranian and Chinese attitude towards social robots. Utilizing the adapted version of the questionnaire Negative Attitude towards Robots Scale (NARS), this study explores the effects of cultural background (Chinese vs. Iranian), gender, and previous robot familiarity on robot acceptance. To reach this goal, 320 participants including 150 Iranians (equal males and females) and 170 Chinese (equal males and females), filled in the adapted NARS questionnaire which consists of 27 questions in three clusters: attitude towards interaction with robots, attitude towards the social influence of robots, and attitude towards emotions in interaction with robots. The data were analyzed by employing a three-way ANOVA to investigate the effects of cultural background (Chinese vs. Iranian), gender, and previous robot familiarity on the robot acceptance. The findings indicated that there was a significant difference between Chinese and Iranian respondents' robot acceptance due to their cultural background, not to their gender neither to their previous familiarity. Therefore, an interaction between cultural factors and robot acceptance was seen between the two cultures. These findings can be useful for educational technologists, robot designers and operators to be more attentive to cultural differences and manufacture more adaptive robots .