What Keeps Users Engaged in Metaverse Gaming? A Social Presence Theory Perspective

Drawing on social-presence-theory, we analyze the impact of users’ social-presence on engagement, hedonic-benefits and anthropomorphism, which consequently effects their continuance-intention in metaverse-gaming. Using PLS-SEM, we analyze responses from metaverse gaming users, and results reveal that social presence significantly increases engagement, hedonic benefits and anthropomorphism. Engagement and anthropomorphism significantly effect continuance intention, while hedonic benefits do not exhibit a significant effect. Both engagement and anthropomorphism mediate the association between social presence and continuance intention. Further, user experience moderates the relationships by strengthening the effect of engagement on continuance intention while weakening the effect of anthropomorphism, offering important theoretical and practical insights.