Hofeditz, LennartLennartHofeditzHarbring, MareenMareenHarbringMirbabaie, MiladMiladMirbabaie0000-0002-9455-5773Stieglitz, StefanStefanStieglitz2024-06-062024-06-062022978-0-9981331-5-7https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/95638Virtual collaboration is an increasing part of daily life for many employees. Despite many advantages, however, virtual collaborative work can lead to a lack of trust among virtual team members, e.g., due to spatial separation and little social interaction. Previous findings indicated that emotional support provided by a conversational agent (CA) can impact human-agent trust and the perceived social presence. We developed an emotional support agent called ELSA and conducted a between-subject online experiment to examine how CAs can provide emotional support in order to increase the level of trust among colleagues in virtual teams. We found that human-agent trust positively influences the level of calculus-based trust among team members and increases team cohesion, whereas perceived anthropomorphism and social presence towards a CA seems to be less important for trust among team members.engcollaborationconversational agenttrustvirtual teamsconferenceobject10.24251/HICSS.2022.050