Conceptualising workers' perceptions of cobot adoption: Well-being, Trust and Acceptance

Collaborative robots (i.e. cobots) are increasingly introduced into industrial settings to reduce physical strain and hazardous exposure. Existing research on human-robot collaboration has largely concentrated on technical and algorithmic development, leaving questions about how frontline workers actually experience and respond to this transition remain unaddressed. This study examines how frontline workers, the operators most directly affected by cobot integration, make sense of cobots before their adoption. Drawing on on-site fieldwork at a battery recycling plant in Jiangxi, China, the paper develops a preliminary conceptual framework encompassing thematic clusters around the dimensions of well-being, trust, and acceptance. Reframing adoption beyond organisational imperatives, the findings reveal the tensions and complex behavioural aspect of workers' expectations and concerns, as features of the adoption process that managerial frameworks tend to overlook. The study contributes a worker-centric analytical lens to the literature on industrial automation adoption, offering organisations a more grounded basis for anticipating resistance, managing expectations, and designing integration processes that account for the agency and concerns of frontline operators.