How Do People Accept Robot in Public Space? A Cross-Cultural Study in Germany and Japan

2026-04-20

AI Summary

This study investigates cultural differences and underlying psychological mechanisms in public acceptance of autonomous cleaning robots in public spaces between Germany and Japan. Drawing on an online survey of participants from both countries, the research develops a cross-cultural comparative model incorporating social norms, trust, and emotional responses. Findings reveal significantly higher acceptance among German participants compared to their Japanese counterparts. While social norms and trust emerge as key predictors across both cultures, their pathways differ: Germans exhibit a “functionality–affect” driven pattern, whereas Japanese responses follow a “trust–emotion” dominant pathway. These results underscore the necessity of embedding cultural adaptability into robotic design and offer theoretical and practical insights for cross-cultural human–robot interaction.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI

Abstract

With the increasing deployment of robots in public spaces, encounters between robots and incidentally copresent persons (InCoPs) are becoming more frequent. However, InCoPs remain largely underexplored in the literature, particularly from a cross-cultural perspective. Therefore, the present study investigates cultural differences in InCoPs' existence acceptance (EA) of autonomous cleaning robots in public spaces among Japanese and German participants. Online survey results revealed that Germans showed significantly higher EA. Social Norms and Trust were the strongest positive EA predictors across cultures. More specifically, for Germans, EA was directly influenced by Usefulness, Interest and Anger, showing a functional-affective pattern where functional perceptions boost EA and anger suppresses it. For Japanese participants, Trust, Surprise and Fear were the direct associational factors, forming a trust-emotion pattern. These findings reveal cultural influences on cognitive and emotional drivers of public robot acceptance, emphasizing the need for culturally adaptive robot design.

Problem

• robot acceptance
• public space
• cross-cultural study
• existence acceptance
• human-robot interaction

Innovation

• cross-cultural study
• existence acceptance
• autonomous robots
• public space
• cultural adaptation