The Effects of Interaction Conflicts, Levels of Automation, and Frequency of Automation on Human Automation Trust and Acceptance

Abstract: In the presence of interaction conflicts, user trust in automation plays an important role in accepting intelligent environments such as smart homes. In this paper, a factorial research design is employed to investigate and compare the single and joint effects of Level of Automation (LoA), Frequency of Automated responses (FoA), and Conflict Intensity (CI) on human trust and acceptance of automation in the context of smart homes. To study these effects, we conducted web-based experiments to gather data from 324 online participants who experienced the system through a 3D simulation of a smart home. The findings show that the level and frequency of automation had an impact on user trust in smart environments. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that the users' acceptance of automated smart environments decreased in the presence of automation failures and interaction conflicts.