Metaverse a commercial bliss for recreational tourism? A multistage mixed-method investigation

With the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the metaverse presents itself as a promising tool for achieving commercial pursuits in the tourism industry. We apply the presence theory to examine how the industry can leverage the remarkable features of the metaverse to create memorable experiences for tourists at brand destinations – a unique identification or memorable experience associated with a destination, preferably induced by highly immersive services facilitated through the metaverse. The need to discern the impact of metaverse technologies on tourists’ psychological well-being led us to adopt a design science methodology, which enabled us to yield significant findings through a mixed-methods analysis comprising four studies. Firstly, we employ the grounded method approach, utilising think-aloud protocol interviews to elicit various themes. Secondly, we conducted a bibliographic study in RStudio software to extract key insights from 119 Scopus journals. Thirdly, using a structural topic modelling approach, we explored various topics. Finally, we employed the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between variables of crucial interest. The significant finding of our study is that the metaverse can be effectively utilised as a highly assistive tool for curating niche experiences for tourists.