Creating Rapport and Intimate Interactions with Online Virtual Advisors

Adopting the view that users perceive their interactions with technological artifacts as social and interpersonal, this paper offers a number of propositions regarding the expected effects of two relationship-level constructs, namely, rapport and intimacy, which have been shown to be influential antecedents to interpersonal relationship satisfaction and interaction quality. Both constructs are proposed to be salient beliefs within the context of users’ interactions with virtual advisors, subsequently, affecting users’ evaluations of these advisors. In addition to offering a conceptualization of these two constructs and their individual dimensions, we also offer a number of propositions in regards to how these two constructs can be influenced using a number of design characteristics that have been discussed in prior literature.