The social presence of artificial intelligence in the MICE industry: Conceptualization, scale development, and validation

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the meeting, incentives, conferences and events industry which forms part of the broader tourism industry. Social presence is a central construct in human-artificial intelligence interaction research, yet its conceptualization and measurement remain underdeveloped in this context. This study conceptualizes social presence in artificial intelligence-enabled meeting, incentives, conferences and events services and develops an initial context-specific scale. Following a three-stage scale-development procedure, 362 questionnaires were distributed in China and 300 valid responses were retained for analysis. The scale was refined through literature-based item generation, expert evaluation, pilot feedback, item analysis, and exploratory factor analysis. To strengthen measurement assessment, the revised scale further clarifies content validity, face validity, construct validity, convergent validity, and preliminary discriminant validity. The final scale supports a four-dimensional structure comprising artificial intelligence competence in the meeting, incentives, conferences and events industry, human-like interaction of artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence emotional influence, and artificial intelligence communication accessibility.