Paper Number
ECIS2026-1942
Paper Type
CRP
Abstract
The proliferation of metaverse applications creates new opportunities for organizations and users, yet empirical insights into user adoption remain limited. This study integrates innovation diffusion theory with social-psychological mechanisms to explain metaverse adoption. Drawing on panel data from 143 users of Decentraland, as well as an immersive VR-based laboratory experiment with pre-/post-exposure measures (n=41), we examine how innovation characteristics influence belongingness, trust, and adoption intention. The results reveal that only compatibility and relative advantage enhance users’ sense of belongingness. Belongingness, in turn, strongly increases trust, which fully mediates its effect on adoption intention. Notably, traditional innovation attributes such as complexity, trialability, and observability do not significantly influence adoption, suggesting that social-psychological mechanisms outweigh functional innovation characteristics in immersive environments. Our findings highlight trust as a key psychological bridge between social attachment and adoption behavior and extend innovation diffusion theory to immersive digital environments. Our findings highlight trust as a key psychological bridge between social attachment and adoption behavior and extend innovation diffusion theory by positioning belongingness as a socio-psychological mechanism linking innovation characteristics to trust and adoption in immersive digital environments.
Recommended Citation
Handrich, Matthias and Winckler, Benedikt, "Inside The Matrix – Belongingness And Trust As Drivers Of Metaverse Adoption" (2026). ECIS 2026 Proceedings. 9.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2026/is_adopt/is_adopt/9
Inside The Matrix – Belongingness And Trust As Drivers Of Metaverse Adoption
The proliferation of metaverse applications creates new opportunities for organizations and users, yet empirical insights into user adoption remain limited. This study integrates innovation diffusion theory with social-psychological mechanisms to explain metaverse adoption. Drawing on panel data from 143 users of Decentraland, as well as an immersive VR-based laboratory experiment with pre-/post-exposure measures (n=41), we examine how innovation characteristics influence belongingness, trust, and adoption intention. The results reveal that only compatibility and relative advantage enhance users’ sense of belongingness. Belongingness, in turn, strongly increases trust, which fully mediates its effect on adoption intention. Notably, traditional innovation attributes such as complexity, trialability, and observability do not significantly influence adoption, suggesting that social-psychological mechanisms outweigh functional innovation characteristics in immersive environments. Our findings highlight trust as a key psychological bridge between social attachment and adoption behavior and extend innovation diffusion theory to immersive digital environments. Our findings highlight trust as a key psychological bridge between social attachment and adoption behavior and extend innovation diffusion theory by positioning belongingness as a socio-psychological mechanism linking innovation characteristics to trust and adoption in immersive digital environments.