VR through the tourism customer journey: expanding UTAUT2 with Anticipated Emotions

Virtual Reality (VR) is transforming destination marketing through the introduction of immersive experiences, which can enhance visitors’ engagement and generate business opportunities. Such experiences can create a deeper connection with visitors, eliciting affective responses, improving both online and on-site experiences, thus generating customer value. Immersive technologies, with their experiential nature, can be particularly impactful for heritage sites, and positively contribute to their competitiveness. For these reasons, practitioners and scholars are interested in studying its adoption to (i) identify the factors that influence consumers' intentions to adopt this technology, and (ii) validate existing theories in the context of this emerging technology, to better explain its adoption patterns in the field of destination marketing. Current literature on VR in destination marketing can be split into five main areas of investigation, each related to one fundamental question: What, Who, How, Why, and When. While the first three macro questions appear to be extensively investigated, Why and When are not. Although it is well clear “Why” destination managers should offer VR solutions, there is still a lack of understanding of why tourists should live them. To fill these gaps, this research explores the factors influencing consumers' intentions to adopt VR in destination marketing. The study has three main objectives: (i) applying the UTAUT2 model to VR adoption in destination marketing, (ii) testing the added value of integrating it with AE to better explain adoption dynamics, and (iii) evaluating how different stages of the customer journey influence the processes that shape consumers' intentions to adopt VR.