How AI-Driven Service Quality Shapes Purchase Intention Toward Smart Hotels: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Value and Satisfaction

Abstract

The rapid diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) in the hospitality industry has given rise to AI-enabled smart hotels that provide contactless check-in, robotic service, intelligent guest rooms, and AI-based customer service. Understanding what drives consumers to adopt such hotels has become an important issue for both scholars and practitioners. Drawing on the service quality–perceived value–satisfaction framework, this study examines how AI-driven service quality shapes consumers’ purchase intention toward smart hotels, and whether perceived value and satisfaction mediate this relationship. Based on a questionnaire survey of the general public, 300 valid responses were collected and analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, hierarchical multiple regression, and bootstrap mediation analysis. The results show that AI-driven service quality significantly and positively affects perceived value (β = 0.537) and satisfaction (β = 0.331); perceived value significantly and positively affects satisfaction (β = 0.339); and perceived value (β = 0.209), satisfaction (β = 0.335), and AI-driven service quality (β = 0.216) all significantly and positively affect purchase intention. A percentile bootstrap procedure with 5,000 resamples shows that the indirect effect of AI-driven service quality on purchase intention transmitted through perceived value and satisfaction is 0.284 (95% CI [0.211, 0.363]), accounting for approximately 57% of its total effect of 0.500. Perceived value and satisfaction therefore act as key partial mediators. The study contributes to the literature on AI adoption in hospitality and offers practical implications for smart-hotel operators seeking to enhance consumer acceptance of AI-based services.