Who do you choose? Comparing perceptions of human vs robo-advisor in the context of financial services

Purpose - This study aims to investigate the differences in consumers' perceptions of trust, performance expectancy and intention to hire between human financial advisors with high/low expertise and robo-advisors. Design/methodology/approach - Three experiments were conducted. The respondents were randomly assigned to human advisors with high/low expertise or a robo-advisor. Data were analyzed using MANCOVA. Findings - The results suggest that consumers prefer human financial advisors with high expertise to robo-advisors. There are no significant differences between robo-advisors and novice financial advisors regarding performance expectancy and intention to hire. Originality/value - This pioneering study extends the self-service technology adoption theory to examine adoption of robo-advisors vs human financial advisors with different expertise levels. To the best of the authors' knowledge, it is among the first studies to address multi-dimensionality of trust in the context of artificial intelligence-based self-service technologies.