Metaverse in tourism: tourist involvement as a moderator

Abstract

This paper aims to identify barriers and enablers of the growing use of Metaverse in tourism by examining users’ intention in selecting a tourist location and hotel for vacation. It employs a mixed methods approach conducted in two phases, namely exploratory and confirmatory. The grounded theory’s twin slate approach allows extracting the factors in the first exploratory phase. The second (confirmatory) phase employs structural equation modeling to analyze the data. The results show that the Perceived Usage Barrier, Perceived Risk Barriers, and Perceived Value Barriers pose as significant barriers to the adoption of the Metaverse.