Organizational support for digital transformation in the metaverse: a contingent pathway from user experience to digitalization resistance

As organizations intensify their digital transformation (DX) initiatives to navigate the evolving digital landscape, metaverses emerge as pivotal digital technology, enhancing collaborative and experiential interactions. Despite their growing integration, a profound understanding of how metaverse utilization influences employee behavior toward DX – particularly in digitalization resistance – remains underexplored. Building a theoretical framework based on the Technology Acceptance Model and Uses and Gratifications Theory, we dissect the potential interplay between user experiences within metaverses, individual value perceptions, and organizational support in shaping resistance to digitalization. Analyzing data from 309 employees within organizations actively using metaverse platforms for vocational interactions, we found that informativeness and social interaction within metaverses significantly enhance the perceived value of virtual platforms. This enhancement in perceived value correlates strongly with reduced resistance to digitalization, confirming the critical role of tailored user experiences in fostering technology acceptance. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that organizational support – represented by DX‐centric shared goals, visibility, and communication – plays a crucial moderating role in amplifying the inverse implications of individuals' value perception for digitalization resistance. This study contributes to the literature by expanding a theoretical understanding of the prolific orchestration among technological characteristics, individual perception, and organizational support for digitalization. It underscores the necessity for a strategic alignment that extends beyond technological implementation to include comprehensive support mechanisms, thereby aiding employees in productively capitalizing on digital technology to integrate it into their operational processes. These findings have practical implications for organizational leaders initiating digitalization, providing insights into effectively managing resistance to digitalization.