2026-10-15T09:56:26Z https://data.mendeley.com/oai

oai:data.mendeley.com/vjhkprsbm6.3 2026-10-12T16:45:01Z

Li, Zhizhou How Accountability-Related AI Anxiety Shapes Perceived Design Agency in Generative AI Co-Creation: Contrasting Roles of Interactivity and Output Diversity Mendeley Data Generative AI increasingly places users in a dual role: creative contributors who shape AI-assisted outputs and decision makers who may feel responsible for those outputs. Drawing on Cognitive Appraisal Theory and psychological ownership research, this study examines whether GenAI interactivity and output diversity are associated with purchase intention via perceived design agency and whether accountability-related AI anxiety conditions these relationships. Study 1 involved 565 adult GenAI users in mainland China who completed a standardized product-customization task and a post-task survey; the conditional process model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Study 2 used semi-structured interviews with 12 participants to interpret the quantitative pattern. Both affordances were positively associated with perceived design agency, which in turn was associated with purchase intention. Accountability-related AI anxiety, however, operated asymmetrically: it weakened the output diversity–agency association, rendering its indirect association nonsignificant at high anxiety, but strengthened the interactivity–agency association and its indirect pathway. Interviews suggested that abundant alternatives increase screening and justification burdens, whereas iterative interaction facilitates correction and restoration of control. The findings show that accountability-related AI anxiety does not uniformly suppress human–AI co-creation; instead, it conditions the relationships of different GenAI features with perceived design agency in opposite directions. Marketing Consumer Behavior Zhang, Qin Dataset doi:10.17632/vjhkprsbm6.3 oai:data.mendeley.com/vjhkprsbm6.3 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/vjhkprsbm6 2026-10-12T16:45:01Z