Can a Conversational Agent Lower Sexual Violence Victims' Burden of Self-Disclosure?

Abstract

Sexual violence victims hesitate to disclose their story to other people for help and often do not report the case to the police because it might lead to unwanted consequences. Thus, conversational agents (CAs) have been in the spotlight as a counselor since they are easily-accessible and nonjudgmental unlike humans. Despite the optimistic view, it is still important to look at what burden victims have when trying to converse with a machine. Thus, this paper aims to identify victims' burdens of human-police (HPI) vs. human-chatbot interaction (HCI). We conducted interviews with ten sex crime professionals (eight police officers and two counselors). As a result, we discovered seven burdens that can occur both in HPI and HCI. Based on our findings, we suggest design efforts and guidelines to develop CAs for sexual violence victims.