Tourists’ virtual reality adoption: an exploratory study from Lake District National Park

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) transforms the way destinations market their tourism offerings. To fully understand the opportunities of a technology, initial research is required assessing user adoption. However, empirical research and particularly exploratory qualitative research on VR adoption in tourism context is limited. Therefore, this study uses an exploratory interview approach with 35 participants near Lake District National Park, UK. Using thematic analysis, this study explores factors that influence VR adoption as well as the influencing factors on tourists' behavioural intentions. This study adds to academia by qualitatively exploring the adoption of a scarcely researched technology within the tourism context. the VR experience were influenced by the novelty of the experience itself rather than the VR content. As such when it comes to "intention to use" the study might paint a skewed picture. Second, the qualitative nature of this study enabled to identify new and contextspecific factors of VR adoption. However, findings are therefore not generalisable and need to be tested on a bigger sample. Third, testing the model in another context would help to understand its power in explaining adoption behaviours across multiple settings.

Virtual Reality of Nature Can Be as Effective as Actual Nature in Promoting Ecological Behavior

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Ambient Information Visualisation and Visitors’ Technology Acceptance of Mixed Reality in Museums

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