HAI 2026 · POSTER PAPER

Examining the Relationship between User Closing Behavior and Rapport in Real-World Human-Robot Interaction

Akihiro Sakuramoto1, Takato Hayashi1, Ryo Miyoshi2,3, Yuki Okafuji2,3, Shogo Okada1

1 Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)
2 CyberAgent   3 The University of Osaka

Source code (GitHub)

How a conversation ends says something about it

Questionnaires are hard to collect when robots talk with people in the real world, so observable cues to interaction quality are needed. Drawing on conversation analysis, we classified how 101 users in 62 sessions ended brief service dialogues with a tabletop robot at the entrance of a Japanese drugstore: departure without leave-taking, unilateral closing, or coordinated closing.

Users with coordinated closing received significantly higher third-party rapport ratings than users who left without leave-taking. After adjusting for dialogue quantity, the differences were no longer significant, but the results suggest that closing behavior may serve as a cue to interaction quality.

日本語で概要を読む

実店舗での人とロボットの対話について、ユーザーの「終わり方」と対話の質の関係を調べた研究です。 日本のドラッグストア入口で卓上ロボットが来店客と交わした短い対話のうち、62セッション・101人を対象に、 会話分析の知見をもとに終わり方を「前置きなしの離脱」「一方的クロージング」「協調的クロージング」の3つに分類しました。

協調的クロージングのユーザーは、前置きなしで離脱したユーザーより、第三者が評定したラポールが有意に高くなりました。 対話量で調整すると差は有意ではなくなりましたが、終わり方が対話の質を示す手がかりになりうることが示唆されました。

Figures

Three panels: departure without leave-taking (38 users), unilateral closing (21 users), and coordinated closing (42 users), each showing a user leaving a tabletop robot.
Figure 1 in the paper. The three closing types observed in this study, informed by Licoppe and Rollet.
Raincloud plots of total rapport, connection, and coordination scores for the three closing types. Coordinated closing scores higher than departure without leave-taking on all three measures.
Figure 2 in the paper. Third-party rapport scores by closing type, with Dunn's tests (Holm-adjusted).

Research materials

Cite this paper

@inproceedings{sakuramoto2026closing,
  author    = {Sakuramoto, Akihiro and Hayashi, Takato and Miyoshi, Ryo and Okafuji, Yuki and Okada, Shogo},
  title     = {Examining the Relationship between User Closing Behavior and Rapport in Real-World Human-Robot Interaction},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction},
  series    = {HAI '26},
  year      = {2026},
  address   = {Osaka, Japan},
  publisher = {ACM},
  doi       = {10.1145/3841580.3845665}
}