Examining Cross-Cultural Differences in Intelligent Vehicle Agents: Repair Strategies after Their Failures

Anthropomorphic design in intelligent vehicle agents (IVAs) is crucial for driving safety and user experience. Cultural background may shape user preferences, as evidenced by Chinese car manufacturers offering more anthropomorphic IVAs (e.g., physical robots, human-like virtual agents) than their Western counterparts. This suggests that a universal approach to anthropomorphic design may not be feasible. While prior academic research has examined cross-cultural differences in visual anthropomorphism, behavioral anthropomorphism remains understudied. In this study, we developed a taxonomy of user requests (N = 60), evaluated the performance and responses of eight IVAs in premium-level cars in the Chinese market (five from Chinese brands, three from Western brands), and analyzed their verbal repair behaviors (e.g., apology, promise) following request failures. Overall, the five Chinese-brand IVAs and three Western-brand IVAs did not differ in their corrective responses to user requests or their likelihood of employing verbal repair strategies. However, our in-depth analysis revealed that Chinese-brand IVAs were more likely to use combined repair strategies rather than single ones and to incorporate intimacy expressions in their verbal repair behaviors compared to their Western-brand counterparts. This suggests potential cross-cultural differences in the design of social strategies for IVAs. We also observed IVA-level variations within both Chinese-brand and Western-brand groups. Future cross-cultural research is needed to inform evidence-based anthropomorphic design.