Exploring Metaverse: Affordances and Risks for Potential Users

Metaverse is a post-reality universe, a permanent and persistent multi-user environment that combines physical reality and digital virtuality. These technologies realize seamless embodied user communication in real-time and dynamic interactions with digital objects, shape users’ perceptions of reality and can be widely utilized for various applications. However, it is still in an infant stage, and a minimal amount is known about why and whether users will adopt such fully immersive technology. The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical model and validate it by a survey to examine what affordances and challenges affect metaverse adoption. Our study potentially contributes to the literature on IS adoption research, and to practitioners on what needs to pay special attention to when designing metaverse