Does personality matter? Understanding the impacts of real-self and avatar personality traits on metaverse satisfaction
Abstract
Purpose
The metaverse enables users to create their own avatars in a shared virtual space, giving rise to a new avatar personality that differs from their real-self personality. The aim of this research is to explore how users' real-self and avatar personalities may affect their behavioral engagement and satisfaction in the metaverse context.
Design/methodology/approach
This research applies self-discrepancy theory to investigate how the big five traits of both real-self and avatar personalities influence users' engagement and satisfaction in the metaverse. The present research employed a mixed-methods approach, beginning with a qualitative study to identify prevalent personality cues among users on metaverse social media platforms. Subsequently, a quantitative study was conducted to further validate the findings of the qualitative study.
Findings
The results indicated that avatar personality scored higher than the real-self personality in the dimensions of openness, conscientiousness and extraversion, while scored lower in the dimensions of agreeableness and neuroticism. Both real-self and avatar personality traits positively influenced metaverse satisfaction via behavioral engagement in the metaverse. Notably, avatar personality traits had a stronger impact on behavioral engagement compared to real-self personality traits, which further influence metaverse satisfaction.
Practical implications
The present study offers practical insights for metaverse developers and managers to enhance user satisfaction by focusing on users’ big five traits of both real-self and avatar personality. It suggests implementing personalized tools, organizing personality-based social activities and other initiatives to encourage user’s behavioral engagement and ultimately enhance metaverse satisfaction.
Originality/value
Unlike existing research that concentrates on a single facet of personality traits, this research employs a mixed-methods approach to conceptualize users' real-self personality and avatar personality, further exploring their impacts on metaverse satisfaction.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their gratitude to the scholars in the relevant field for their prior research and insights, which have been instrumental in shaping our understanding and guiding the direction of this research. We also extend our thanks to the Internet Research review team for their detailed and constructive feedback on the manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to Shasha Zhou and Shuang Zheng for their valuable comments and helpful suggestions. This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72371223).
Citation
Yang, S., Lin, K., Wang, X., Li, Y., Chen, Y. and Wei, J. (2024), "Does personality matter? Understanding the impacts of real-self and avatar personality traits on metaverse satisfaction", Internet Research, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-01-2024-0018
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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