Financial Digital Twins and Conversational AI in Robo- Advisory: Evidence from a Scenario-Based Randomized Experiment

Robo-advisors have expanded access to automated investment services, but many platforms continue to rely on relatively static onboarding procedures and limited forms of user interaction. This study examines how participants with investment experience respond to two next-generation robo-advisory design features: financial digital twins, understood as dynamic investor profiles that integrate goals, risk tolerance, cash-flow patterns, and anticipated life events, and conversational artificial intelligence (AI), understood as an interactive interface for explaining recommendations. Using a scenario-based randomized 2 × 2 online experiment, 336 adult respondents with self-reported investment experience, recruited through professional and academic networks, were assigned to one of four robo-advisor scenarios that varied the personalization architecture, standard versus digital twin, and the interface style, plain dashboard versus conversational AI, while holding the portfolio recommendation constant. The results show that digital-twin personalization increases perceived personalization and privacy concern, indicating that more adaptive advisory architectures may be viewed as both more relevant and more data-intensive. Conversational AI increases the perceived interactive quality of the advisory experience, while the clearest adoption-related patterns emerge when it is combined with digital-twin personalization, particularly for selected indicators of stated behavioral willingness. Given the limited internal consistency of several secondary composite measures, the findings are best interpreted as evidence of scenario-based investor responses rather than as validated evidence of actual adoption behavior or confirmed psychological mechanisms. The study contributes to behavioral FinTech research by clarifying the personalization-privacy tension in AI-enabled robo-advisory services and by offering design implications for more transparent, interactive, and responsibly personalized digital wealth management systems.