Metaverse engagement and Korea travel intentions: Understanding affordances, presence, and place attachment among Brazilian ZEPETO users

Abstract

This study explored the relationship between metaverse experience and travel decisions through a survey of 459 Brazilian ZEPETO users. The results show that well-organized affordances had a significant impact on users' sense of presence. Neither social realism nor cyber sickness had a significant impact on immersion, but spatial presence was strongly correlated with immersion and place attachment. Higher immersion did not consistently lead to higher place attachment or intention to visit South Korea. These findings highlight the need for well-designed affordances to enhance presence in the metaverse. While perceptions of co-presence and spatial presence can promote place attachment, they can also have potentially negative effects by inducing excessive immersion. Nevertheless, moderate use of metaverses can be a powerful tourism strategy by stimulating the desire to visit replicated places. The study suggests that the feeling of being with other users in a particular virtual space that represents the real world well can create an attachment to a place and lead to more visits.