How AI-Self-Service Technologies Reshape Consumer Participation: A Grounded Theory of Value Co-Creation and Shadow Work

Artificial Intelligence-enabled Self-Service Technologies (AI-SSTs) create a core paradox: systems designed to enhance efficiency and autonomy simultaneously generate value co-creation and shadow work. Existing theories treat empowerment and burden as separate, static outcomes and cannot explain their coexistence within the same service encounter. This study draws on 23 in depth interviews with Chinese consumers and uses constructivist grounded theory to identify a generative mechanism termed the ‘Responsibilization Cycle’. Organizations shift service responsibilities to consumers through institutional coercion, technologies embed these redistributed tasks into interface structures, and users cognitively adapt by framing these demands either as competence enhancing opportunities or as unsupported burdens. This study contributes to the field by theorizing how shadow work is structurally produced, reconceptualizing empowerment as a relational state contingent on fairness and support, and revealing how compulsory participation can be obscured by design logics. The Responsibilization Cycle provides a unified explanation for divergent AI-SSTs experiences and illuminates how work and agency are reconfigured within the digital era.