Research on the User Acceptance of Educational Robots: Theoretical Perspectives, Methods, and Influencing Factors

To clarify the current status of international applications of educational robots and guide future directions, this paper conducts a systematic literature review to analyze relevant empirical studies from three dimensions: theoretical perspectives, research methods, and findings. The findings indicate that at the theoretical level, existing studies predominantly examine teacher and student acceptance through the lenses of human cognition, technological media agency, and human-robot interaction. At the methodological level, three research settings have emerged, including physical robot presence, digital video mediation, and virtual reality embedding, with mixed methods being widely adopted for data collection and analysis. Regarding influence mechanisms, the specific effects of factors at the individual level such as gender, personality, and cognition, the technological level including robot appearance, gender, and function, and the pedagogical level involving knowledge content, subject tasks, and classroom roles have been identified. Consequently, future research should further integrate diverse theoretical perspectives on acceptance surveys, prioritize the collection and analysis of multimodal data, and explore the interactive effects and underlying logic of individual, technological, and pedagogical factors on educational user acceptance.