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What Is the Draw of the Metaverse? Personality Correlates of Zepeto Use Motives and Their Associations With Psychological Well-Being

Despite the hype surrounding the metaverse, there is scant empirical research that examines who uses the service, for what specific purposes, and with what consequences. Based on a survey of current Zepeto users (N = 200), a popular metaverse application that enables people to create avatars and soc...

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Autores principales: Lee, Eun-Ju, Lee, Wonjae, Bae, Inhwan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9989513/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36827586
http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2022.0164
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author Lee, Eun-Ju
Lee, Wonjae
Bae, Inhwan
author_facet Lee, Eun-Ju
Lee, Wonjae
Bae, Inhwan
author_sort Lee, Eun-Ju
collection PubMed
description Despite the hype surrounding the metaverse, there is scant empirical research that examines who uses the service, for what specific purposes, and with what consequences. Based on a survey of current Zepeto users (N = 200), a popular metaverse application that enables people to create avatars and socialize while exploring the virtual spaces, we investigated (a) the key motives of Zepeto use, (b) how Big Five personality traits predict specific motives of Zepeto use, and (c) how specific motives of Zepeto use are associated with users' psychological well-being. Overall, users were largely driven by the desire to explore the virtual world and enjoy unique experiences, but such a tendency was stronger among those higher on openness and agreeableness. Extroverts were more likely to use Zepeto for functional purposes, while those higher on neuroticism turned to Zepeto to escape from reality. As for psychological consequences, while those using Zepeto for functional and escaping purposes reported higher levels of loneliness, those who used Zepeto for social and experiential goals were less lonely. The experiential and escape motives predicted perceived social support in the opposite directions. Moreover, by comparing Zepeto users' responses with those of non-users (N = 200), we found that (a) non-users overestimated users' motives of Zepeto use, especially social and escape motives, (b) Zepeto users were higher on extraversion and openness than non-users, and (c) users reported higher levels of loneliness than non-users with no significant difference in perceived social support. Implications of the findings and future directions are discussed.
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spelling pubmed-99895132023-03-08 What Is the Draw of the Metaverse? Personality Correlates of Zepeto Use Motives and Their Associations With Psychological Well-Being Lee, Eun-Ju Lee, Wonjae Bae, Inhwan Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw Original Articles Despite the hype surrounding the metaverse, there is scant empirical research that examines who uses the service, for what specific purposes, and with what consequences. Based on a survey of current Zepeto users (N = 200), a popular metaverse application that enables people to create avatars and socialize while exploring the virtual spaces, we investigated (a) the key motives of Zepeto use, (b) how Big Five personality traits predict specific motives of Zepeto use, and (c) how specific motives of Zepeto use are associated with users' psychological well-being. Overall, users were largely driven by the desire to explore the virtual world and enjoy unique experiences, but such a tendency was stronger among those higher on openness and agreeableness. Extroverts were more likely to use Zepeto for functional purposes, while those higher on neuroticism turned to Zepeto to escape from reality. As for psychological consequences, while those using Zepeto for functional and escaping purposes reported higher levels of loneliness, those who used Zepeto for social and experiential goals were less lonely. The experiential and escape motives predicted perceived social support in the opposite directions. Moreover, by comparing Zepeto users' responses with those of non-users (N = 200), we found that (a) non-users overestimated users' motives of Zepeto use, especially social and escape motives, (b) Zepeto users were higher on extraversion and openness than non-users, and (c) users reported higher levels of loneliness than non-users with no significant difference in perceived social support. Implications of the findings and future directions are discussed. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers 2023-03-01 2023-03-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9989513/ /pubmed/36827586 http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2022.0164 Text en © Eun-Ju Lee et al., 2023; Published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License [CC-BY] (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Lee, Eun-Ju
Lee, Wonjae
Bae, Inhwan
What Is the Draw of the Metaverse? Personality Correlates of Zepeto Use Motives and Their Associations With Psychological Well-Being
title What Is the Draw of the Metaverse? Personality Correlates of Zepeto Use Motives and Their Associations With Psychological Well-Being
title_full What Is the Draw of the Metaverse? Personality Correlates of Zepeto Use Motives and Their Associations With Psychological Well-Being
title_fullStr What Is the Draw of the Metaverse? Personality Correlates of Zepeto Use Motives and Their Associations With Psychological Well-Being
title_full_unstemmed What Is the Draw of the Metaverse? Personality Correlates of Zepeto Use Motives and Their Associations With Psychological Well-Being
title_short What Is the Draw of the Metaverse? Personality Correlates of Zepeto Use Motives and Their Associations With Psychological Well-Being
title_sort what is the draw of the metaverse? personality correlates of zepeto use motives and their associations with psychological well-being
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9989513/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36827586
http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2022.0164
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