Unraveling the Barriers Contributing to the Seniors Travelers’ Non-adoption Intention of Virtual Reality

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) has gained popularity and has been adopted by the hospitality and tourism industries as a means of engaging customers and marketing. However, there is still a relatively moderate level of VR adoption by senior travelers in the tourism context, even though they are a potential group of tourists that could benefit. With this context in mind, this study sought to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the barriers that subsidize senior tourists’ resistance to VR. The hypothesized model was assessed using PLS-SEM centered on the responses of 431 senior Pakistani tourists. These findings demonstrate that technical and psychological barriers play an eminent role in explaining senior tourists’ resistance to VR. Specifically, senior tourists’ resistance to VR is associated with inertia, perceived risk, technology anxiety, incompatibility, and insufficient human interaction. In conclusion, resistance influences attitudes and non-adoption intention (NI), with attitude assisting as the mediator between NI and resistance. Additionally, perceived complexity was not significantly associated with resistance. Furthermore, NI for VR has been reported to be influenced by resistance.

Keywords:

• Innovation resistance theory
• non-adoption intention
• virtual reality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Key Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (grant number 21AGL014).