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Through the lens of self-perception theory, this paper investigates how avatar design (i.e. avatar user similarity) affects users' self-awareness and shapes their task engagement and performance in the Metaverse.

The authors conducted a 2 (avatar user similarity: high vs low) × 2 (task type: procedural vs creative) lab experiment and collected data from questionnaires, the recording of users' behavior during tasks and their actual task performance.

The results show that higher avatar user similarity leads to higher task engagement in general. Furthermore, while a similar avatar promotes users to regulate their behaviors and achieve better performance in a procedural task, high similarity also inhibits users' creativity by invoking habitual thinking, resulting in worse performance in generating original ideas in a creative task.

This study is expected to contribute to the information systems literature by revealing the value of avatar design and providing new perspectives on improving users' experiences in the Metaverse.

It is predicted that virtual business and related research possibilities will expand significantly. In this context, the aim of this paper is to use insights from a virtual research project to present a theoretically‐informed toolbox of practical suggestions to guide the conduct of virtual world business research.

Archival evidence is presented, and data from a study conducted in Second Life^® in 2007 is interpreted through Llewellyn's framework (physical, structural, agential, cultural and mental dimensions).

With the burgeoning of virtual business applications, appropriate systems that encompass the dynamics of both the real and the virtual will need to be developed by and for accountants, auditors and business professionals. Researchers of virtual business activities will need to adapt to the physical, structural, agential, cultural and mental dimensions unique to virtual worlds.

While based on reflections from a single study in Second Life, this paper identifies possibilities for future virtual research on issues of accountability and accounting relating to virtual worlds.

The practical toolbox will assist virtual researchers to deal with the possibilities and practicalities of conducting research in virtual worlds.

Despite the proliferation of virtual worlds, predictions of virtual business applications, and consequent accountability and accounting implications, there is a paucity of academic literature on conducting business research in virtual settings. This prescient paper develops a conceptual framework to guide the conduct of research in virtual worlds, and identifies the unique opportunities and challenges they present.

This paper aims to examine the impact of metaverse experiences on customers’ offline behavioral intentions: How do customers’ visits to a hospitality business’s virtual property in the metaverse affect their intentions to visit the physical property in the real world?

Based on the general learning model and social cognitive theory, this research hypothesizes the positive impact of metaverse experiences on customers’ visit intentions and explores two boundary conditions for positive impact: user–avatar resemblance and servicescape similarity. Two experimental studies were conducted.

Metaverse experience has a significant impact on customers’ visit intentions, and this impact is moderated by user–avatar resemblance and servicescape similarity.

This research addresses the call for empirical studies regarding the effects of metaverse experience on people’s behavioral intentions.

As one of the earliest empirical studies on the marketing effects of the metaverse, this research provides a basis for future metaverse studies in the hospitality field.

This study aims to investigate the influence of different virtual fashion styles on attitude and satisfaction within virtual reality (VR) tourism experiences. The investigation considers the mediating effect of perceived attractiveness, popularity, novelty and weirdness, as well as the moderating role of self-congruence with avatar clothing and the desire for unique products.

This research uses a quantitative experimental approach. Initially, a three-step pilot study (N = 201) was conducted to select avatar fashion styles for the main investigation. In the primary study, participants (N = 326) engaged with one out of four fashion style conditions to select attire for their avatars and then completed a self-administered survey. Data analysis involved paired-sample t-tests, multivariate analysis of variance and Hayes’ PROCESS Models.

The results show that presenting fantasy avatar fashion styles leads to a decrease in perceived attractiveness and popularity, while concurrently increasing perceptions of novelty and weirdness which in turn exert a negative influence on attitude and satisfaction with the virtual fitting room (VFR). However, these relationships change when considering the moderating role of self-congruence with avatar clothing and the desire for unique products.

VR tourism experience providers and designers can use research findings to bolster positive attitude and enhance satisfaction with VFR; an important first step that strongly affects the rest of the VR tourist journey.

This study contributes to tourism research by exploring the intersection of immersive technologies and virtual fashion. It emphasizes the enhancement of critical touchpoints like the VFR, moving beyond a sole focus on VR adoption, to improve the overall virtual tourist experience.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of user personality and vlaues on the number of connections users make, the number of requests for connections that users give out, and the number of connections invitations users receive.

This is a field study of 179 participants interacting in a novel virtual world. The world’s server logs are used to capture sociometrics about the users and their interaction.

Findings suggest that personality and values influence the number of friends users make and the number of friendship requests users give out, but not the number of friendship invitations users receive. Only one personality trait – conscientiousness – exhibits homophily.

Perosnality and social value orientation have rarely been studied together in information systems (IS) research, despite research showing the two have an impact on IS relevant constructs. The use of server logs for data capture is novel. Avatar friendship is an under-researched concept in IS.

Drawing on virtual liminoid theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine factors that induce a multisensory flow experience in an e-shopping context through the use of augmented-reality interactive technology (ARIT).

To validate the research framework, a task-based laboratory study was performed. Participants were recruited through a snowball e-mail method and requested to freely and independently use ARIT for clothes fitting in the laboratory, after which they completed a questionnaire; 336 valid responses were received.

Empirical results revealed that three decorating psychological states (sense of body ownership, sense of ownership control, and self-explorative engagement) directly induced a multisensory flow experience. Furthermore, two multisensory factors (sense of self-location and haptic imagery) mediated the multisensory flow experience through these three decorating psychological states.

Consumers not only rely on generating self-display for optimal fitting in virtual avatar decoration in an e-shopping context but also concentrate more on expression and control of self-body. As consumers’ decorating psychological states require an ideal form of self-expression, a high degree of autonomy in exploring self-decoration options will create more value for consumers. Considering that expressing and controlling the self-body in addition to self-explorative engagement in virtual avatar decoration will trigger the flow experience in an e-shopping context, increasing the use of multisensory ARIT to trigger decorating psychological states in e-shopping contexts is highly recommended.

In this study, a relationship was constructed among virtual liminoid theory, flow theory, and multisensory technology, and an integrated conceptual framework was developed for the relationship between decorating psychological states and multisensory flow experience.

The rapid progress of information and communication technologies enables business creators to access a wide variety of tools. These tools facilitate electronic exchanges and interactions with customers and companies. The purpose of this study is to test and compare the effectiveness of two virtual reality technologies, the avatar and anthropomorphic virtual agents, on consumers’ psychological states and perceived realism.

An experimental survey was conducted to measure the potential superiority of the anthropomorphic virtual agent over the avatar and to identify the determining characteristics of the anthropomorphic virtual agent’s effectiveness. An experimental website was designed for the purpose of the study. A total of 1,262 internet users participated in the experiment.

Results confirm the superiority of the anthropomorphic virtual agent over the avatar in affecting consumers’ flow state, telepresence experience and perceived realism. These findings can be explained by the humanized characteristics of this type of agent (i.e. verbal and nonverbal language).

The originality of this research lies in the study of different forms of social interactivity. This latter has been little studied and essentially treated with a dichotomous perspective (presence/absence of a virtual agent). New trends in digital marketing challenge entrepreneurs to be proactive and to anticipate customers’ behavior on their online stores. That is why, virtual reality technologies, namely, anthropomorphic agents, can be considered as a relevant tool to engage in efficient inbound marketing strategies. Today, the development of intelligent technologies encourages entrepreneurs operating online to design more interactive, realistic and humanized virtual merchant environments that are more adapted to the realities of the new consumption trends and environment.

This study aim to attempt to conceptualize agency in a hospitality setting and examine the psychological effects of agency-related visual cues on user perception and intention to use to understand the role of agency in the digitalization of hotel services.

After developing demo videos of an express check-out application, two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of using an avatar and explain the psychological mechanism of how attributes of an avatar increase intention to use.

Study 1 found that the presence of an avatar had a positive influence on intention to use. Study 2 retested the findings of Study 1 and illustrated the psychological mechanism of how two attributes of an avatar (social position and gender) influenced perceived expertise and intention to use. A significant interaction effect between social position and gender was found on perceived expertise. Perceived expertise also mediated the effect of an avatar on intention to use in the male avatar conditions.

As the first attempt to investigate the role of avatars in human–computer interaction in a hotel setting, this study will serve as an example in testing the effects of agency-related technical features on user experience and behavioral intention, possibly broadening the current research scope of hospitality and tourism. This study also provides a useful guideline to develop and design a successful interface of digitalized hotel services.

This paper aims to examine three distinct aspects of authenticity that pre-service teachers (PSTs) experience when they engage with virtual classroom environments to develop their content-intensive instructional practice – task authenticity, student avatar authenticity and performance authenticity – and their perceptions about the usefulness of the simulated teaching experience to support their learning.

This paper explored these conceptions of authenticity and usefulness within a larger research study whose goal was to develop virtual environment tools to help elementary PSTs learn how to engage in one ambitious teaching practice: facilitating discussions that engage students in argumentation. To examine these aspects of authenticity and usefulness, this paper used a general qualitative deductive analysis approach to examine data from 104 interviews with 26 case study teachers and examined patterns in PSTs’ perceptions within and across interviews and authenticity aspects.

While these PSTs strongly value the utility of these tools to support their learning, findings point to variation in their perceptions of authenticity. Findings showed that most PSTs perceived the tasks as an authentic representation of the work of teaching. However, their perceptions of task authenticity did not always align with their perceptions of avatar or performance authenticity.

This paper argues that these three aspects of authenticity relate to, but expand upon, the broader notions of presence and plausibility noted in the literature on virtual environments and should be taken up more directly in future studies of users’ perceptions of virtual environments both within and outside of educational contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to help marketing scholars view virtual worlds as new product–markets and trigger serious investigations on consumer evaluation of brand extensions when a brand is extended from the real world to a virtual world and vice versa.

The paper makes an extensive review of studies on virtual world. Further, it amalgamates understanding from well-established literature on consumer evaluation of brand extensions into the emerging virtual world understanding to conceptualize moderating influence of contexts – the real world context and a virtual world context – on how consumers evaluate brand extensions.

Through logical arguments supported by existing literature, the paper provides 14 well-conceptualized propositions that argue that the real world and virtual world contexts moderate the well-established relationships in brand extension literature. It broadly proposes that the relationships between the consumer evaluations of brand extension and its known determinants are stronger in case of within-the-world extensions and weaker in case of across-the-world extensions.

The paper introduces to the marketing scholars an entirely new area of enquiry as it challenges the known brand extension knowledge when a brand is extended across the worlds.

Marketers considering launching new offerings across the contexts of real or virtual world would have implications on whether to extend the brand or not.

Virtual worlds have largely been construed in marketing literature as fictional worlds. There is not much explored in terms of virtual worlds as new product–markets. The study offers unique value in conceptualizing differences among within-the-world brand extensions and across-the-world brand extensions.