Human-Robot Collaboration and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Psychological and Emotional Mediating Pathways

The accelerated integration of robotics within the manufacturing sector has facilitated enhanced work efficiency and reduced resource consumption among employees. How will employees utilize these resources saved by robots? Will they reinvest these resources into the organization again? Drawing from the conservation of resources theory (COR), we theorize that collaboration between employees and robots facilitates them engage in more organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The mediating role is played by cobot identity and emotional exhaustion. Considering the supplementation of resources, we selected the personality—openness, as a moderating factor. Two field studies were conducted. Study 1 (N = 220) is a two-wave lagged survey for employees in logistics industry. The results indicated that human-robot collaboration affects OCB through cobot identity and emotional exhaustion, as well as their chain mediating pathways. Study 2 (a three-wave lagged survey; N = 294) expanded the sample to the entire manufacturing industry. It confirmed the results of Study 1 and provided further validation of the moderating effect of openness. When openness is high, the direct effect and indirect effects of human-robot collaboration on OCB are amplified. This research provides organizations with the means to establish effective human-robot collaboration and guides employees to make more OCB.