Concertscapes: An investigation of the mediating and moderating mechanism driving attendance intention through the metaverse platform

The virtual world-based metaverse could revolutionize how individuals experience reality by extending to the physical world and creating a seamless bridge for interaction between digital and tangible realms. Virtualizing live concerts to digital format in a virtual-physical integrated metaverse environment, compared to traditional virtual settings, provides a new paradigm for participating in a more immersive and interactive digital concert. Mainly drawing upon the Cognitive Absorption Theory and complemented by the Process Virtualization Theory, this research proposes a multi-stage framework to investigate the mechanism and underlying processes related to metaverse concert participation under contingent situations. This research applies a multi-survey approach, with two sequential quantitative studies—one distributed in Indonesia using Poplite and a subsequent survey in the United States through MTurk. The consistent findings from the two studies provide robust evidence for the roles of participants’ intrinsic motivations and the characteristics of the virtualization mechanism as vital determinants to influence the virtualizability of the metaverse concert process, leading to higher concert participation intention. Furthermore, concert performance risk is proven to act as a moderator in the relationship between process virtualizability and intention.