From Virtual Assistants to Intimate Partners: Factors Driving Chatbot Adoption and How Users Develop Emotional Attachment to Chatbots

From Virtual Assistants to Intimate Partners: Factors Driving Chatbot Adoption and How Users Develop Emotional Attachment to Chatbots

AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT are gaining increasing popularity and importance against the backdrop of the AI revolution. Despite the plethora of chatbots on the market, the questions of which chatbot a user adopts and why some users develop stronger emotional attachments remains understudied. Capitalizing on a large-scale survey with over 8,000 responses collected from Germany, the United States, China, and South Africa, this study scrutinizes chatbot acceptance and emotional attachment in the context of ChatGPT and DeepSeek. We find that product usefulness and social influence play a critical role in the acceptance of chatbots. We also find that respondents are significantly more likely to accept chatbots from countries toward which they had positive feelings and to oppose chatbots from countries associated with negative sentiments.

This study further seeks to explain why some users develop stronger emotional attachments to chatbots than others. We propose a dynamic interaction theory of emotional attachment, which emphasizes the perceived emotional support from chatbots, users’ social networks, and the depth and frequency of chatbot use. We find that over one-third of respondents reported some form of emotional attachment to chatbots, depending on how attachment is measured. For instance, 39% of respondents considered chatbots to be their friends, and 62% of respondents used polite expressions such as "thank you" when interacting with them. Second, there is a strong correlation between the perceived emotional support and self-reported emotional attachment. Those who obtained emotional support from chatbots, such as the decrease in loneliness, were more likely to report a higher degree of emotional attachment. Both the frequency and depth of chatbot use are positively correlated with emotional attachment. To our surprise, however, the size of social network is negatively associated with emotional attachment. These findings have important implications for the appropriate use of AI chatbots in the context of emotional support.

Hui Zhou is postdoctoral researcher in the "Privacy China" project at the Institute for Chinese Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. He graduated with a PhD in Political Science from University of Houston and worked as an Assistant Professor at Saint Louis University before joining Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests include Privacy, Digital Governance, Crisis Management, Dispute Resolution, and Distributive Politics.

Genia Kostka is Professor of Chinese Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on digital transformation, local governance, and environmental politics. She is particularly interested in how digital technologies are integrated into local decision-making and governance structures in China.

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Lecture Series: AI Governance in China

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming societies, economies, and political systems worldwide, and China is emerging as a central actor in shaping the governance of these technologies. This lecture series explores the multiple dimensions of AI governance in China, from state regulation and the role of AI in public administration to societal engagement with AI technologies.

Join us online and in person for six lectures featuring leading scholars, including: Jinghan Zeng (City University of Hong Kong), Hui Zhou and Genia Kostka (Freie Universität Berlin) and Angela Huyue Zhang (USC Gould School of Law), Eddie Yang (Purdue University), David Yang (Harvard University) and Jeffrey Ding (George Washington University).

Hosted by the Berlin Contemporary China Network (BCCN), the China Competence Training Center (CCTC) and SCRIPTS, the 2025/26 winter term lecture series is conceptualized by Prof. Dr. Genia Kostka and Anton Bogs from Freie Universität Berlin.