AI vs. Human Voices: How Delivery Source and Narrative Format Influence the Effectiveness of Persuasion Messages

AI communicators (e.g., AI voice assistants) play an increasingly important role in how individuals receive information, and, sometimes, calling for a more comprehensive understanding of the effectiveness of messages communicated through human and non-human sources. Through a web-based experiment (N = 228), we tested how the persuasive effects of messages are influenced by their format (narrative vs. non-narrative) and the communicator (human voice vs. AI voice) in the scenario of debunking myths about COVID-19 vaccination. The findings revealed that the human communicator was perceived to be more credible and had more influence on participants’ attitude than the AI communicator. Further, the human communicator was particularly persuasive than the AI communicator in delivering a narrative persuasive message, but the effect was not mediated by perceived communicator credibility. The findings augment the literature on narrative persuasion by comparing human and non-human communicators as the delivery source. It also reveals the importance of considering non-human information communicators in research on narrative persuasive messages.