Expert or peer? Understanding the implications of virtual advisor identity on emergency rescuer empowerment in mobile psychological self-help services

Psychological self-help services on mobile devices play a vital role in supporting emergency rescuers who engage in highly stressful and self-devoting careers with frequent exposure to dangers and traumatic scenes right after disaster strikes. In this study, we propose and design a low-cost and widely deployable strategy for empowering emergency rescuers through an intelligent mobile psychological self-help tool. This tool will help reduce the gap between the limited number of qualified professional counsellors and the high demand for timely psychological support by rescuers. We start with a thorough investigation of user requirements, extant work, and relevant IS design theories to inform our system design choices, among which we identified that “virtual advisor identity” (VAI) needs further research. We then empirically examined how VAI influences the empowerment effect of ERMS. Involving 120 emergency rescuers who have just finished rescue tasks, our experiment shows that VAI has important effects on a user’s cognitive and emotional routes, which are significant empowering enablers that lead to positive empowerment outcomes. Interestingly, virtual peer advisor empowers users mostly through evoking emotional resonance from them, whereas virtual expert advisor is better at empowering users through cognitive channels. Important theoretical and practical implications of the findings are then discussed. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.