That's why I always clarify that an essential piece of Basic Income is that it is unconditional. Whether you're on the bottom rung of society or the top, employed or unemployed, basic income should be the same amount.
When the choice to get a job changes from "Well I'd lose my benefits" to "Well my basic income is no longer enough, I'll work part time", then state welfare no longer becomes as much of a trap. It can finally make strides towards lifting people out of poverty.
In addition, full, 100% automation doesn't seem likely to me. Service sectors of the economy may simply keep smaller human staffs in order to keep their hospitality atmosphere. Not enough to offset job loss in other sectors, but there are already plenty of businesses today that have a human element that don't _actually_ need them. It might even look like a luxury business model. No reason that will go away just because robots can do it better.
Trying to peg UBI to regional cost of living costs an incredible amount of money (the cost of living in the Bay Area has to be at least 10x the rural Rust Belt) and has practically no benefit (because all it means is people get the privilege of living wherever they want on redistributed money, rather than choosing to either live where they want and seek the means to afford it or living where its cheapest and costing society less in macrospect.
There already exist communities and retirement homes whose entire agreement with its residents is "give us your social security checks, we give you food shelter etc". If you know constant money is coming in, arranging your business around being super easy to use for that money is a very lucrative opportunity.
Whereas many of us spend our limited freedom chasing pleasurable (and unpleasurable) illusions that lead only to disorder and despair. That said, there are plenty of sane, wealthy people in the West who do important work for the sake of it, because they wish to. How do more of us become like them?
Also, despite apparently comfortable conditions, there are plenty of survival problems which remain. For example, meteor strikes, super-volcanoes, cancers, toxic ideologies/religions. Plus an unlimited number of as yet unidentified problems.
These problems are more abstract than working for a pay packet to buy food but they are nonetheless real. And they are not being sufficiently addressed! Universal Basic Income could turn out to be an important breakthrough in this regard, I think, if we also address the question I posed at the end of paragraph 2 above.
If it's determined that money makes lazy and that's moral hazard there should be really high tax for inheritance.
http://time.com/money/3925308/rich-families-lose-wealth/ "It takes the average recipient of an inheritance 19 days until they buy a new car."
Whereas the reality of people receiving free money might be somewhat different. There's the drip, drip welfare payments of just enough money to survive without being motivated to find a job. Then there's the fallout, family break-up and chaos that occur in the wake of a lottery win. Both morally questionable.
Or perhaps there might be a settling down period of people acting irresponsibly followed by a recognition that engagement with the problems of civilisation and survival doesn't end because one has food, shelter and internet. There are novels to write, structures to design, problems to solve and of course there's science to be done. Work is more fun than 'fun'. Pick something worthy of your talents or start the slide into mental disorder and addiction.
Whatever the truth it almost goes without saying that a study alone cannot sort these issues out. Perhaps it can help. But in science experiment is insufficient there has to be theory to go with. (This is a major reason why so few studies in medicine and psychology are reproducible. I assume in sociology too.) What makes it more difficult in this case is there are moral components which can't be assessed empirically, only by conjecture and criticism.