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Article published In: Social Cues in Robot Interaction, Trust and Acceptance
Edited by Alessandra Rossi, Kheng Lee Koay, Silvia Moros, Patrick Holthaus and Marcus Scheunemann
[Interaction Studies 20:3] 2019
► pp. 393–425

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Children’s acceptance of social robots

A narrative review of the research 2000–2017

 | Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam
 | Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam
 | Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam
 | Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), University of Amsterdam
Published online: 18 November 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18071.jon
Abstract
Social robots progressively enter children’s lives, but little is known about children’s acceptance of social robots and its antecedents. To fill this research gap, this narrative review surveyed 34 articles on child-robot interaction published between 2000 and 2017. We focused on robot, user, and interaction characteristics as potential antecedents of children’s intentional and behavioral social robot acceptance. In general, children readily accept robots. However, we found that social, adaptive robot behavior, children’s sex and age, as well as frequency of the interaction seem to affect acceptance. Additionally, we found various theoretical and methodological shortcomings in the field. The review concludes with recommendations and directions for future research on children’s acceptance of social robots.
Article outline
  • Antecedents of robot acceptance
    • Characteristics of the robot
    • Characteristics of the user
    • Characteristics of the interaction
    • Interactions between antecedents
  • Methodological characteristics
    • General methodological characteristics
    • CRI-specific methodological characteristics
  • Method
  • Results
    • The effect of robot characteristics on acceptance
    • The effect of user characteristics on acceptance
    • The effect of interaction characteristics on acceptance
    • Interactions between antecedents
    • Methodological characteristics
  • Discussion
    • Antecedents of children’s social robot acceptance
    • Interaction between antecedents
    • The influence of methodological characteristics
  • Conclusion and future directions
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
References (98)
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2022. Design and Evaluation of a Personal Robot Playing a Self-Management for Children with Obesity. Electronics 11:23 ► pp. 4000 ff. DOI logo
de Jong, Chiara, Jochen Peter, Rinaldo Kühne & Alex Barco
2022. Children’s Intention to Adopt Social Robots: A Model of its Distal and Proximal Predictors. International Journal of Social Robotics 14:4 ► pp. 875 ff. DOI logo
De Jong, Chiara, Jochen Peter, Rinaldo Kühne & Alex Barco
2024. Children's Acceptance of a Domestic Social Robot: How It Evolves over Time. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction 13:2 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Gao, Jing & Chi Lin
2022. Artificial Intelligence Application in the Design of Children's Service Robot Based on Context Perception. Mobile Information Systems 2022 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Ríos Rincón, Adriana Maria, William Ricardo Rodríguez-Dueñas, Daniel Alejandro Quiroga Torres, Andrés Felipe Bohórquez & Antonio Miguel-Cruz
2022. Children’s Imaginaries of Robots for Playing With. International Journal of Social Robotics 14:2 ► pp. 463 ff. DOI logo
Zhao, Zhao & Rhonda McEwen
2022. 2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), ► pp. 24 ff. DOI logo
de Jong, Chiara, Jochen Peter, Rinaldo Kuhne, Caroline van Straten & Alex Barco
2021. 2021 30th IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), ► pp. 598 ff. DOI logo
Kitt, Elizabeth R., Molly K. Crossman, Angela Matijczak, Gillian B. Burns & Alan E. Kazdin
2021. Evaluating the Role of a Socially Assistive Robot in Children’s Mental Health Care. Journal of Child and Family Studies 30:7 ► pp. 1722 ff. DOI logo
Neerincx, Anouk, Thirza Hiwat & Maartje de Graaf
2021. Adjunct Proceedings of the 29th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization, ► pp. 120 ff. DOI logo
Barco, Alex, Chiara de Jong, Jochen Peter, Rinaldo Kühne & Caroline L. van Straten
2020. Companion of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, ► pp. 125 ff. DOI logo
de Jong, Chiara, Rinaldo Kühne, Jochen Peter, Caroline L. van Straten & Alex Barco
2020. Intentional acceptance of social robots: Development and validation of a self-report measure for children. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 139 ► pp. 102426 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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