Why do consumers with social phobia prefer anthropomorphic customer service chatbots? Evolutionary explanations of the moderating roles of social phobia

•Two experiments examined the effects of different types of AI customer service.•Consumers with high social phobia prefer anthropomorphic embodied conversational agents.•Social phobia moderates the effects of consumer-chatbot personality matching vs. mismatching.•Competent/warm AI for less conscientious/less agreeable, social phobic consumers helps.•Evolutionary explanations and managerial implications for AI creative directors are provided. Drawing from evolutionary psychology of anthropomorphism and social phobia, two between-subjects experiments examined the effects of different types of customer service chatbots. Experiment 1 supports the interaction effects between chatbots’ anthropomorphism and consumers’ social phobia on continuance use intention and willingness to recommend the chatbot. Consumers with high social phobia prefer anthropomorphic chatbots to less anthropomorphic chatbots. Experiment 2 confirms the moderating role of social phobia in determining the effects of consumer-chatbot personality matching (similarity attraction) vs. mismatching (complementarity attraction) on the outcome variables only for competent chatbots. For the consumer-chatbot personality mismatching condition, developing competent chatbots for less conscientious consumers with high social phobia will help alleviate socially isolated consumers’ social pain, while developing too smart chatbots for less conscientious consumers with low social phobia can have detrimental effects. Evolutionary psychological mechanisms and managerial implications for chatbot developers and creative directors are explained.