**6. Conclusions**

Although previous research analyzed customer attitudes toward service robots in the general service context [37,87–89], little research has taken the context of public health emergencies into account. This research aimed to discuss the effect of perceived risk on customer–robot engagement in a public health emergency.

First, perceived risk has a positive impact on customer–robot engagement. Specifically, when the perceived risk of COVID-19 is at a higher level, there will be stronger protection motivation for customers. Further, customers will pay more attention to service robots, show more enthusiasm towards service robots, and have more interaction with service robots. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, most researchers found that customers preferred service to be provided by human staff rather than by service robots [37,87–89]. Some research on anthropomorphism argued that anthropomorphized robots could reduce resistance from customers [84,85]. Anthropomorphism of the robot is the attribution of human characteristics or behavior to a robot [84,85]. When customers perceived the risk of COVID-19 is at a higher level, customers have a tendency to reduce contact with human staff. Based on the anthropomorphism of service robots, people can contact service robots to replace some social activities. Service robots satisfy the social need of customers and take the place of human staff to some extent. Our findings suggest that due to the higher perceived risk of COVID-19, customers are more likely to engage with service robots in the pandemic. It demonstrates that COVID-19 may accelerate the process of acceptance of service robots without human contact, as service robots decrease the risk of COVID infection by allowing easier social distancing.

Second, our research showed that social distancing is the mediator of the effect of the perceived risk of COVID-19 on customer–robot engagement. When customers are faced with health threat information regarding COVID-19, they will appraise the health threat, including its severity and their vulnerability. When the perceived risk is high, customers will adopt a coping strategy and will strengthen social distancing, which will further enhance customer–robot engagement.

Third, risk attitude moderates the mediating effect of social distancing. The mediating effect of social distancing on the relationship between perceived risk of COVID-19 and customer–robot engagement is stronger for risk-averse (vs. risk-seeking) customers. Compared to risk-seeking customers, customers who are risk-averse attach more importance to the coping strategy of health risk. Thus, when they perceive a higher level of risk, their willingness to socially distance will be stronger, and their engagement with service robots will be enhanced.

Finally, our results showed that the moderating effect of health consciousness is not significant. The possible reason is that the direct effect of perceived risk diminishes the moderating effect of health consciousness. In the COVID-19 pandemic, customers with different levels of health consciousness perceive a high level of risk, and they would like to keep social distance and further choose to engage with service robots.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, J.W., X.Z., G.F.Y.-B., and Y.Z.; methodology, J.W.; writing original draft preparation, J.W., G.F.Y.-B., and X.Z.; writing—review and editing, J.W. and X.Z.; visualization, J.W. and X.Z.; supervision, J.W. and Y.Z.; project administration and funding acquisition, J.W. and Y.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [72002225, 71672203]; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [20wkpy12]; the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2020M683148), and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2021A1515011899, 2017A030313406).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Because of the observational nature of the study, and in the absence of any involvement of therapeutic medication, no formal approval of the Institutional Review Board of the local Ethics Committee was required. Nonetheless, all subjects were informed about the study, and participation was on a fully voluntary basis. Participants were assured of confidentiality and anonymity of the information associated with the surveys. The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent has been obtained from all subjects involved in this study to publish this paper.

**Data Availability Statement:** The dataset used in this research are available upon request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to restrictions, i.e., privacy or ethical. **Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
