Despite the promising opportunities of Virtual Reality (VR) adoption in cultural heritage settings, there is a need to deepen the understanding of the underlying motivations of visitors’ resistance to the use of these new technologies. This study aims to identify a theoretically grounded conceptual model able to explain the resistance of heritage visitors in adopting VR. By adopting the theoretical lens of Innovation Resistance Theory, the study compares and combines the barriers to technology adoption arisen from a comprehensive review of quantitative studies that have applied IRT, with the barriers arisen from empirical findings in the specific context of VR adoption in cultural heritage tourism.