Metaverse friends with social benefits: Effects of social identity on the intention to purchase virtual products through site attachment, user engagement, and public self-consciousness

The metaverse has fundamentally transformed remote interactions and retail commerce, providing virtual collaborative workplaces and vibrant digital shopping experiences. This study examines the consumption decisions of digital communities, emphasizing the relationship between metaverse users' social identity and their intention to purchase virtual products, mediated by site attachment and user engagement, and moderated by public self-consciousness. Confirmatory factor analysis and Models 6 and 59 of the PROCESS macro were used to conduct an online survey of 319 female metaverse users from South Korea. The results revealed a direct association between respondents' social identity and their purchase intention. While user engagement mediated this relationship, site attachment did not. Additionally, their social identity positively influenced purchase intention through the serial mediation of both site attachment and user engagement. Furthermore, public self-consciousness partially moderated the influence of social identity on purchase intention and acted as a moderated mediator through enhanced site attachment and user engagement. This study makes a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge on this topic by integrating social identity theory and the public self-consciousness literature within metaverse environments and offers insights to virtual brand marketers into how to facilitate users' emotional bonds and social participation. In particular, strong site attachment alone is not a significant positive predictor of users’ intention to purchase virtual products; user engagement is also important. Hence, shifting the focus toward user experience offers new perspectives of how emotional and social connections drive user behavior in the metaverse.