Assessing Students' Perception Towards Metaverse Technology: A Study on the Social Sustainability of Immersive Virtual Technologies in Higher Educational Institutions

The term “metaverse” refers to the combination of virtual and actual worlds, enabled through computers and accelerated by immersive technologies like mixed reality, augmented reality, and virtual reality. In the metaverse, people engage with one another using Avatars, creating a unique social experience. This technology opens up exciting opportunities across various sectors, especially in higher education. However, while the metaverse promotes virtual social interactions among users, such as university students, there's still a lot we don't know about what shapes their views on its social sustainability in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and universities, especially in developing countries. This research aims to pinpoint the factors that affect students' opinions on the social sustainability (SS) of the metaverse in Indian HEIs. The study uses the most practical “Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology” (UTAUT) model, incorporating context-related factors like “perceived curiosity” (PC) and “extraversion” (EXT), alongside core elements such as “facilitating conditions” (FC), “performance expectancy” (PE), “social influence” (SI), and “effort expectancy” (EE), to develop a comprehensive study model. By including PC and EXT, the research seeks to enhance UTAUT's relevance across various technologies and settings. Data was collected through an online survey involving 122 students from various universities in India. The findings from the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis indicated that the “social sustainability” (SS) of metaverse technology in universities and higher education institutions is significantly impacted by EE, FC, and EXT. This study adds valuable insights to the extant body of literature on the acceptance and adoption of metaverse technology in higher education.