With the steady development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), online stores are adopting chatbot services as virtual shopping assistants. This study proposes the concept of para-social presence to explore the undiscovered role of fashion chatbots'' emotional and relational characteristics on service acceptance. Based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this study investigates the effect of a chatbot''s para-social presence on service acceptance intention through consumers'' beliefs. The web-based experiment was conducted on adult consumers who experienced chatbot services in an online shopping situation. A total of 247 responses were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and multi-group SEM by AMOS 21.0 and SPSS 23.0. The findings illustrate that the chatbot''s intimacy positively influenced consumers'' perceived enjoyment, while the chatbot''s understanding had a significant effect on perceived usefulness and ease of use. The chatbot''s involvement had a positive effect on all consumer beliefs. Moreover, perceived ease of use had a positive influence on usefulness. A greater level of perceived usefulness and enjoyment positively heightened consumers'' service acceptance intention. This study also verifies the moderating role of a need for human interaction. Consumers with a high need for human interaction have a relatively low tendency to perceive chatbot services as useful.

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