i-TAM: A model for immersive technology acceptance

Immersive technologies strive to enhance users’ digital experiences by enabling more interactive, engaging, and realistic virtual environments. Despite the growing popularity and advancements in immersive technologies, achieving widespread user acceptance remains a significant challenge. In addition, previous acceptance models may not fully capture the unique and emerging aspects of immersive experiences. Accordingly, understanding the underlying factors shaping user intentions towards immersive technologies is crucial for devising effective strategies to promote acceptance and foster adoption across diverse user populations and application domains. This research attempt to investigate what factors impact user’s intention to use immersive technology. We adopted the well-recognized TAM model as the theoretical ground of this study. To meet the requirements of immersive technologies, a new research model, called i-TAM (Immersive Technology Acceptance Model) is developed to examine the individuals’ acceptance of immersive technologies. The research model was tested by the data collected from 454 individuals who have interacted with an immersive platform. i-TAM suggests that perceived social presence, perceived emotional impact, perceived ease of use, and perceived learning impact behavioral intention to engage, which accordingly impacts immersive engagement. The study also examines the moderation impacts of experience on the relationships between each of perceived social presence, perceived emotional impact, perceived ease of use, and perceived learning and behavioral intention to engage. The collected data was then analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), in which both the quality of the data and the significance of paths were examined. The results support the main hypotheses of the research model and the moderation effects of experience on the relationships between perceived ease of use and perceived learning and behavioral intention to engage. i-TAM provides a useful tool and base model for researchers in conducting research in immersive technologies and helps managers and information technology developers to better understand the drivers of acceptance of an immersive technology by individuals.