Beyond the Headsets: Implications of individual differences and pre-exposure in tourism
Doctoral thesis
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Date
2024Metadata
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- Marketing management [11]
Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) has revolutionised marketing practices, particularly within the tourism sector, attracting substantial attention from scholars in the field of marketing. Unprecedented technological advancements have empowered VR to provide tourists with immersive and realistic experiences, presenting lucrative opportunities to businesses capable of harnessing its potential. However, it remains uncertain how more interactive VR influences tourist behaviours and which user segments stand to benefit most from it. From a theoretical standpoint, this thesis contributes to several aspects of tourism marketing literature. Firstly, it reveals that heightened interactivity in VR experiences corresponds to elevated levels of both presence and cybersickness simultaneously. Secondly, this thesis investigates how effectively interactive VR influences curiosity in a tourism context. Thirdly, this thesis proposes two types of factors that affect the potential for interactivity to influence tourist responses to VR experience: (a) individual difference factors and (b) structural/procedural factors, including pre-exposure and duration of VR experience. Individual differences emerge as a crucial moderator in shaping the effect of interactivity on presence, butthis is contingent upon the specific VR content users engage with. From a practical perspective, this thesis has implications for VR developers refining VR content and interaction designs, and for businesses and researchers developing VR experience procedures, and for marketers formulating personalised marketing strategies to optimise user experiences. From a methodological perspective, this thesis has employed a rigorous research design that accounts for the effect of vision-associated factors, including 3D vision, interpupillary distance, visual acuity, and eye correction. In conclusion, the findings of this thesis pave the way for a deeper understanding of VR’s potential in the tourism context and highlights avenues for future research within this rapidly evolving field.