When the Avatar Is First Worn: Trait Feeling and Introversion as Predictors of User Presence in a Novice VTubing Training Protocol

Avatar-mediated streaming has become a distinctive mode of content creation; however, we still lack empirical insight into how novice performers experience avatar embodiment upon their first exposure to VTubing. This study examined whether four continuous psychological type dimensions (Introversion, iNtuition, Feeling, Perceiving) are associated with user presence, measured through the three presence dimensions of the source instrument (property, agency, and change) with privacy examined as a separate exploratory construct, among undergraduate digital media students completing a five-week VTubing training-and-streaming protocol. A quantitative survey embedded in that protocol (n = 120) was analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), applying the HTMT criterion for discriminant validity and 5000 bootstrap subsamples. In the exploratory second-order model, Feeling was the strongest correlate (β = 0.442, p < 0.001, f2 = 0.282), followed by Introversion (β = 0.260, p = 0.002) and, negatively, iNtuition (β = −0.236, p = 0.009), while Perceiving was null; together the personality predictors explained 37.3% of the variance in User Presence, and the pattern held after controlling for gender congruence and prior experience. A disaggregated analysis located these associations: Introversion was associated with agency only, iNtuition negatively with property (body ownership) only, and Feeling with property, agency, and privacy. Three of the four predictors were strongly imbalanced in this sample, so pole imbalance is a plausible alternative explanation for the non-significant paths, and all findings are exploratory and correlational. Within these limits, streamer avatar presence appeared dispositionally structured rather than a uniform product of the technology, with affective rather than social orientation as its principal correlate.