Building citizen trust to enhance satisfaction in digital public services: the role of empathetic chatbot communication

The use of chatbots in digital public services is becoming increasingly widespread, and therefore, it is necessary to foster citizens’ trust in chatbots to enhance their satisfaction with such services. Although empathy is recognised as a critical component of public service interactions, research regarding empathetic chatbot communication in the public sector remains limited. This study applies the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework to explore the mechanisms and boundary conditions of empathetic chatbot expressions. The findings from a scenario-based online experiment involving 297 Chinese participants demonstrate that empathetic expressions significantly enhance both affective and cognitive trust, which further boost users’ satisfaction with digital public services. Notably, previous experience with chatbots and the anthropomorphism of the chatbot identity moderate the effectiveness of empathetic expressions. Overall, this study highlights the advantages and boundary conditions of empathetic expressions in public service chatbots, thereby providing valuable insights for their design and application in the context of digital public services.