The Impact of Automation on Risk-Taking: The Role of Sense of Agency

2025-09-16

AI Summary

This study investigates how automation influences human risk-taking behavior through its modulation of perceived self-agency. Using a multi-experiment design, we orthogonally manipulated two key automation dimensions—automation level (low/medium/high) and system reliability (high/low)—and measured subjective agency ratings alongside behavioral risk decisions. Results demonstrate that higher automation levels significantly reduce both perceived agency and risk-taking propensity, whereas higher system reliability enhances both. Critically, perceived agency fully or partially mediates the effect of automation on risk decisions. This work is the first to empirically disentangle and validate the distinct psychological impacts of automation level versus reliability, establishing perceived agency as a central mechanistic construct. The findings provide theoretical grounding and empirical evidence for human-centered design of intelligent systems and for evidence-based risk governance in automated environments.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Multiagent Systems under Uncertainty
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Decision/Utility Theory
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Automation significantly alters human behavior, particularly risk-taking. Previous researches have paid limited attention to the underlying characteristics of automation and their mechanisms of influence on risk-taking. This study investigated how automation affects risk-taking and examined the role of sense of agency therein. By quantifying sense of agency through subjective ratings, this research explored the impact of automation level and reliability level on risk-taking. The results of three experiments indicated that automation reduced the level of risk-taking; higher automation level was associated with lower sense of agency and lower risk-taking, with sense of agency playing a complete mediating role; higher automation reliability was associated with higher sense of agency and higher risk-taking, with sense of agency playing a partial mediating role. The study concludes that automation influences risk-taking, such that higher automation level or lower reliability is associated with a lower likelihood of risk-taking. Sense of agency mediates the impact of automation on risk-taking, and automation level and reliability have different effects on risk-taking.

Problem

• Examining how automation alters human risk-taking behavior
• Investigating sense of agency as mediator in automation effects
• Exploring differential impacts of automation level versus reliability

Innovation

• Quantifying sense of agency via subjective ratings
• Testing automation level and reliability effects
• Establishing agency as mediating factor