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Natalia
Amat-Lefort

I study the interaction between humans and emerging technologies, bridging behavioral science and computer science.

As a researcher and lecturer at Leiden University's Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), I design user studies to understand how people interact with technology.

My current work focuses on Human–AI interaction. Drawing on my background in consumer research, I use quantitative survey methods (such as structural equation modelling) and text analytics to explore how people perceive, trust, and adopt AI. I also investigate how psychometric factors and sociodemographic differences influence the use of AI for various purposes, such as emotional support.

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Natalia Amat-Lefort

01 / About

About me

From Industry to Academia

Before becoming a teacher and researcher, I worked as a Senior Strategy & Operations Consultant at KPMG and EY, where I learned to build financial models and optimize operations for clients across different sectors. During this time, I volunteered to teach entrepreneurship and digital transformation courses to high-school students through Junior Achievement. These teaching experiences motivated my decision to pursue an academic career.

Research Evolution: From Digital Platforms to AI

My research investigates how humans interact with emerging technologies. During my PhD at UIC Barcelona (2019–2023), I focused on consumer studies within the sharing economy, exploring service quality and satisfaction in digital platforms like Airbnb and shared mobility networks. As technology has evolved, so has my focus. At LIACS, my work transitioned from digital platforms, to chatbots, to my current focus on human–AI interaction. In particular, my most recent work explores the adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) for emotional support.

Methodological Approach

My work bridges behavioral science and computer science. Drawing on my background in consumer research, I design user studies to understand technology adoption and user perceptions. I use quantitative survey methodologies (such as structural equation modeling) and text analytics (including topic modeling, sentiment analysis, and LLM-assisted knowledge extraction) to analyze user-generated content and prompts. Ultimately, my goal is to translate complex human–technology dynamics into actionable insights to make AI development more human-centered.

Education

  1. 2019 – 2023

    Ph.D. in Business Management (Cum Laude)

    Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona)

    Best PhD Thesis Award (2025). Research collaboration with Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Newcastle University (UK), and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).

  2. 2022

    Machine Learning: Leveraging Data Insights

    MIT Professional Education

    Emerging Technologies Online Program, supported by a Banco Santander scholarship.

  3. 2018 – 2019

    Master's in Business Management

    UPF Barcelona School of Management

    Best Master's Thesis Award (2019).

  4. 2011 – 2015

    Bachelor of Business Management

    Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF, Barcelona)

    Top 3% of class; Best Case Study Award (2013). Exchange semester at Boston College (Carroll School of Management), focusing on strategy and computer science.

02 / Research

Research themes

01

Human–AI Interaction & Generative AI Adoption

As AI systems shift from tools to collaborative partners, understanding how users perceive and interact with AI is key. This research thread explores user perception, trust, and the behavioral drivers behind adopting conversational agents and AI systems such as LLMs. For example, my research investigates how factors like anthropomorphism (making a chatbot feel “more human”) affect user experience, and how sociodemographic differences shape the ways people adopt and trust LLMs for tasks like emotional support. The goal is to establish empirical foundations that ensure conversational systems are safe and human-centered.

Key work From Chatbots to Confidants (2026) · More Human, Less Bot (2024) View related publications →
02

Applied Language Technologies & User Text Analytics

Traditional user-research methods often struggle to scale or to capture granular sentiment from the massive volume of user-generated content available today. This ongoing pillar deploys Natural Language Processing and text analytics (from sentiment features and topic models to LLMs) to extract insights from textual data like user reviews or prompts. Recent projects include building issue-detection systems for public-sector applications (Dutch government apps) and designing privacy-preserving information-extraction methods for sensitive legal text.

Key work Int. Journal of Quality & Reliability Management (2023) · HICSS (2023) View related publications →
03

Consumer Dynamics & Experience in Digital Platforms

The rapid rise of the sharing economy and peer-to-peer digital platforms (home-sharing, shared mobility) transformed consumer expectations. This theme (main focus of my PhD research) addressed the complexities of multi-sided markets, investigating what drives customer loyalty, satisfaction, and friction. By introducing frameworks to conceptualize and measure “service inconvenience” and the alignment of guest and host expectations, this research gives digital platforms the behavioral frameworks they need to improve service quality and future-proof user retention in highly competitive ecosystems.

Key work Journal of Service Research (2026) · Int. J. of Consumer Studies (2025) View related publications →

03 / Publications

Publications & working papers

Full list on Google Scholar →
  • ★

    An inconvenient truth: understanding service inconvenience in digital platforms

    N. Amat-Lefort, S. J. Barnes

    Journal of Service Research, 29(1), 45–62

    2026
  • ★

    From chatbots to confidants: a cross-cultural study of LLM adoption for emotional support

    N. Amat-Lefort, M. Yazan, A. C. Curry, F. M. Plaza-del-Arco

    arXiv preprint · arXiv:2604.25525

    2026
  • ★

    Who trusts AI with their emotions? Trust formation and sociodemographic variation in LLM use for emotional support

    N. Amat-Lefort, M. Yazan, A. C. Curry, F. M. Plaza-del-Arco

    arXiv preprint · arXiv:2608.21220

    2026
  • ★

    More human, less bot: how anthropomorphism impacts user experience in customer support chatbots

    N. Amat-Lefort, C. van Driel

    International Conference on Intelligent Human Computer Interaction (IHCI), 147–158

    2024
  • ★

    Quality 4.0: big data analytics to explore service quality attributes and their relation to user sentiment in Airbnb reviews

    N. Amat-Lefort, F. Barravecchia, L. Mastrogiacomo

    International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 40(4), 990–1008

    2023
  • ★

    Towards a new model to understand quality in collaborative consumption services

    N. Amat-Lefort, F. Marimon, M. Mas-Machuca

    Journal of Cleaner Production, 266, 121855

    2020

  • FLANS at SemEval-2026 Task 7: RAG with open-sourced smaller LLMs for everyday knowledge across diverse languages and cultures

    L. Bogdanova, S. Sun, L. Han, N. Amat-Lefort, F. M. Plaza-del-Arco

    SemEval-2026 · arXiv:2603.01910

    2026

  • QuadAI at SemEval-2026 Task 3: ensemble learning of hybrid RoBERTa and LLMs for dimensional aspect-based sentiment analysis

    A. J. W. de Vink, F. K. Ventirozos, N. Amat-Lefort, L. Han

    SemEval-2026 · arXiv:2603.07766

    2026

  • Privacy-preserving information extraction with local LLMs: a comparative study on Dutch debt collection letters

    B. Celep, N. Amat-Lefort, J. Visser

    Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2026), 10140–10149 · ELRA

    2026

  • Configuring trust in generative AI: integrating trust theory and user segmentation

    A. Akhmedova, F. Marimon, M. Mas-Machuca, N. Amat-Lefort

    SSRN · 6278331

    2026

  • Fulfilled expectations: key to customer loyalty in digital home-sharing platforms

    F. Marimon, N. Amat-Lefort, M. Mas-Machuca

    International Journal of Consumer Studies, 49(3), e70051

    2025

  • ReviewGraph: a knowledge graph embedding based framework for review rating prediction with sentiment features

    A. J. W. de Vink, N. Amat-Lefort, L. Han

    2025 IEEE International Conference on Knowledge Graph (ICKG), 43–50

    2025

  • Issue detection and future proofing Dutch government apps using language technologies

    A. M. Matei, F. M. Plaza-del-Arco, N. Amat-Lefort

    2025

  • What can we learn from the ‘wisdom of crowds’? Drivers of (dis)satisfaction in shared mobility platforms: a comparison of free-floating and station-based models

    A. Akhmedova, N. Amat-Lefort, F. Barravecchia, L. Mastrogiacomo

    Journal of Cleaner Production

    2024

  • Guest and host perspectives of service quality and satisfaction in digital home-sharing platforms

    N. Amat-Lefort, F. Marimon, M. Mas-Machuca

    Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 24(6), 859–884

    2023

  • Exploring driver and user perspectives of service quality in sharing economy transport platforms

    N. Amat-Lefort, F. Marimon, M. Mas-Machuca

    Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 34(11–12), 1315–1333

    2023

  • Towards more convenient services: a text analytics approach to understanding service inconveniences in digital platforms

    N. Amat-Lefort, S. Barnes

    Proceedings of the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)

    2023

  • Fulfilment of expectations and loyalty in digital home-sharing platforms

    F. Marimon, N. Amat-Lefort, M. Mas-Machuca

    83rd Academy of Management Conference

    2023

  • Understanding quality and consumer satisfaction in platform-based services: conceptual model, assessment scale, and consumer analytics

    N. Amat-Lefort

    Ph.D. dissertation

    2023

  • Exploring Airbnb service quality attributes and their relation to user sentiment through text mining analytics

    N. Amat-Lefort, F. Barravecchia, L. Mastrogiacomo

    31st Spanish Academy of Management (ACEDE) Conference

    2022

  • Big data insights from shared mobility platforms: drivers of user (dis)satisfaction

    A. Akhmedova, N. Amat-Lefort, F. Barravecchia, L. Mastrogiacomo

    22nd European Academy of Management (EURAM) Conference

    2022

  • What do drivers care about? Exploring how service quality is perceived by providers of collaborative transport services

    N. Amat-Lefort, F. Marimon, M. Mas-Machuca

    7th International Workshop on the Sharing Economy (IWSE)

    2021

  • Identifying the drivers of service quality in collaborative accommodation services

    N. Amat-Lefort, F. Marimon, M. Mas-Machuca

    4th International Conference on Quality Engineering and Management (ICQEM)

    2020

  • Evolution of financial information and management control over the last 150 years: the case of Bodegas Torres

    O. A. Salas, N. Amat

    Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Department of Economics and Business

    2019

  • Costs and international relocation: the case of a textile company

    N. Amat-Lefort

    Revista de Contabilidad y Dirección, 26, 175–184 · Spanish

    2018

  • Initiatives that have boosted the abundance of capital for financing new businesses

    N. Amat-Lefort

    Revista de Contabilidad y Dirección, 27, 83–91 · Spanish

    2018

  • From financial value to real company value

    N. Amat, O. Amat

    Oikonomics: Economics, Business, and Society Journal, 10, 74–86 · Catalan

    2018

  • The reliability of financial information and its impact on analysts and investors: the case of Pescanova

    N. Amat-Lefort, R. Mercader, P. Crespo

    Revista de Contabilidad y Dirección, 16, 291–314 · Spanish

    2013

04 / Teaching & Mentoring

Teaching, supervision, and mentoring

Teaching experience

Main instructor 2022 – present

LIACS, Leiden University

Master-level courses: Operations Management and Systems Optimization (both taught in English).

Main instructor 2019 – 2022

UIC & Tecnocampus

Bachelor-level courses: Accounting II (Cost Accounting) at UIC; Financial Management at Tecnocampus (taught in English).

Teaching assistant 2018 – 2019

UPF Barcelona

TA for four Bachelor-level courses (Financial Accounting, Cost Accounting I, International Financial Accounting, and Introduction to Financial Accounting), preparing and leading tutorial sessions in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

Mentoring & Associations

LIAXX

2023 – Present

Member of LIAXX, a women's network at Leiden University. I contribute by helping organize events to inspire and empower women in Computer Science.

UPFemale Mentoring

2020 – 2024

A woman-to-woman mentoring project created at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona, connecting female students with alumni professionals to help close gender gaps in business. As a mentor, I guided several female students through one-to-one mentoring sessions, and I also helped organize and promote events focused on personal and professional growth.

Erasmus Student Network — Mentor Program

2014 – 2015

Mentored several international students at my university, helping them settle in and navigate academic life abroad.

Student supervision

Student Role Year
Lu, S.1st2026
Afzal Khan, R.N.2nd2026
Chatterjee, A.D.2nd2026
Kitagawa, S.1st2025
Papadaki, I.1st2025
Vonk, J.1st2025
Matei, A.1st2025
Wiharnadi, D.1st2025
Fatima, F.2nd2025
Celep, B.2nd2025
Sluis, D. van der2nd2025
Goretti, M.G.R.1st2024
Knigge, M.C.1st2024
Driel, C. van1st2024
Akkers, M.2nd2024
Fietelaars, C.L.T.E.2nd2024

Roles: 1st = first supervisor · 2nd = second supervisor.

05 / Honors & Other

Honors, scholarships, and other activities

Awards, honors, & nominations

  • 2025

    Best PhD Thesis Award — Faculty award, UIC Barcelona.

  • 2025

    Nomination: Teacher of the Year Award — Leiden University, Faculty of Science.

  • 2023

    PhD awarded Cum Laude — UIC Barcelona.

  • 2023

    Nomination: Teacher of the Year Award — Leiden University, Faculty of Science.

  • 2023

    Best Paper Award — 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (Decision Analytics & Service Science Track).

  • 2019

    Best Master's Thesis Award — UPF Barcelona School of Management.

  • 2015

    Graduated in the top 3% of my Bachelor class — Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona).

  • 2015

    Semi-finalist: Unilever Future Leaders League (local and global student competition).

  • 2013

    Best Case Study Award — Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona).

Scholarships & fellowships

  • 2025

    Una Europa scholarship — Data Science and AI for Social Welfare Challenge (Summer School, Universidad Complutense).

  • 2022

    Banco Santander scholarship — MIT Professional Education, Emerging Technologies Online Program.

  • 2022

    Research collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) through the Regional Academy on the United Nations (RAUN).

  • 2014

    AGAUR/MOBINT scholarship to study at Boston College.

  • 2014

    Aurora Bertrana–Santander scholarship to study at Boston College.

Academic service & volunteering

  • 2025 – Present

    Chair of the Business Studies Education Committee at LIACS.

  • 2023 – 2025

    Member of the Business Studies Education Committee at LIACS.

  • 2020 – Current

    Peer reviewer for several consumer research and human–computer interaction journals and conferences.

  • 2016 – 2017

    Volunteer educator with Junior Achievement, teaching entrepreneurship and digital transformation to high-school students.

  • 2015

    Volunteer consultant for Banc dels Aliments (Food Bank), a non-profit Spanish organization that fights hunger and food waste.

07 / Contact

Let's start a conversation.

I am always open to discussing new research collaborations, speaking opportunities, or answering questions about my work.

n.amat.lefort [at] liacs.leidenuniv.nl
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