How Do Personality Traits Affect Consumer Decision-Making in Metaverse?

Abstract

There has been increased interest in new experiential dimensions generated in the new reality enabled by various extended reality (XR) technologies — The Metaverse. It is still unclear whether consumers’ decision-making processes and patterns remain the same as in the physical world. Individual factors such as personality traits may influence decision-making in the Metaverse as such factors are usually in line with technology acceptance, efficacy, and attitude. In order to understand how personality traits influence consumer decision-making in the Metaverse, this study conducts a between-subject experiment (N=162) related to a daily-life shopping task to investigate the interaction effects between five different personality traits and two XR technologies (AR - Augmented Reality and VR - Virtual Reality) on two goals (avoidance vs. approach) which driving decision-making. The results indicate that neither VR nor AR influence decision-making goals, while consumers with high neuroticism have higher choice confidence when making decisions in VR.