Research On The Impact And Mechanism Of Interactivity On User’s Purchase Intention In Virtual World

A virtual world is a computer-simulated virtual space as opposed to the real world,which transcends the limitations of time and space and can help people communicate and interact more widely in the virtual space through avatars.Unlike the broad definition of virtual worlds in previous literature,this study takes a narrow definition of virtual worlds perspective and argues that virtual worlds in a broad sense can be regarded as virtual worlds applied in other fields.From this perspective,this study finds that the development of the internet has led to the iterative innovation of virtual worlds,which have gradually matured and been used in other fields,including the social and shopping fields that have become popular in recent years,resulting in two categories of social virtual worlds and shopping virtual worlds.Virtual worlds in social and shopping scenarios cater to users’ needs for social interaction and transactions,presenting huge economic benefits and market potential.This has not only made virtual worlds operators think about what factors can stimulate users’ purchasing behavior but also created a new door for academic research in virtual worlds.Through a review of previous literature,this study finds that the antecedents of virtual world purchases include many aspects,such as emotional,social,cognitive,and information technology,but fewer studies have addressed the role of interactivity.As a way for users to communicate with the system,interactivity is the basis for the successful design of online platform systems.Currently,the importance and role of interactivity for virtual world purchasing is not understood and explored in a comprehensive manner.On the one hand,the level of interactivity coverage is incomplete and the utility of key components is unknown;on the other hand,the findings on the impact of interactivity have not been extended to all scenarios of virtual worlds.Given this,this paper will answer the reasons for user purchase in virtual worlds from the perspective of interactivity,and explore the motivation and internal mechanism of interactivity influencing virtual world purchase,which is necessary to further understand user needs and increase economic benefits.Through background analysis and literature review,this study classifies and delineates interactivity and virtual worlds from a holistic perspective,analyzes the impact of virtual world user purchases in social and shopping scenarios from three dimensions of interactivity,and proposes four research components based on this.First,based on the dual perspectives of users and developers in virtual worlds,this study analyzes the impact of interactivity at the process and perception level on the improvement of users’ purchase intention,this promoting the development of the virtual world markets.This study employs an evolutionary game method to model the supply and demand relationships between users and developers in social virtual worlds and examines the role of social influence and perceived size embodied in interactivity.The results show that the psychological effects of users’ purchases and the cost of time spent influence the behavioral strategy changes of both parties.In addition,interactivity effectively stimulates users’ purchasing behavior and also provides developers with effective options for strategic choices,thus promoting the efficiency of virtual world markets.This part has certain implications for the theoretical study of social virtual worlds and their purchase,and is an important guide for the performance improvement of social virtual world developers.Then,based on self-presentation theory,this study further constructs and empirically tests the internal mechanisms of process and perception level of interactivity on user purchase in social virtual worlds.Process and perception level of interactivity can be reflected as social influence and personal control,respectively,in social virtual worlds,and are manifested in four variables: engagement,norm,perceived usability,and perceived interactivity.It is found that these four variables can significantly influence users’ self-presentation in social virtual worlds and ultimately trigger their purchase intention through self-presentation.The results of the moderated mediation analysis also indicate that self-presentation positively influences trust in social virtual worlds,which is not directly related to users’ purchase intentions,but trust has an indirect effect on those users who perceive the purchase as more valuable.That is,perceived value reinforces the transmission mechanism between self-presentation and purchase intention,which reveals the pathways and mechanisms by which interactivity affects purchase intention through self-presentation.Subsequently,this study analyzes the influence of interactivity on purchase intention through the manifestation of functional level of interactivity in the shopping virtual world.In particular,the study concludes that functional level of interactivity is manifested in a variety of functional features,and summarizes these features through a four-layer structure that includes individual,conversations,community,and commerce.The four-layer structure suggests that the design of shopping virtual worlds should be based on the pursuit of the integrity of the four layers and the flexible design and allocation of functional features within each layer.Further,in order to test the overall effect of the hierarchy on users’ purchases,this study proposes the concept of functional feature richness and provides a set of operationalized measures.The results show that functional feature richness improves users’ perceptions of product quality by satisfying their acquisition utility and reduces their perceptions of product price by transaction utility,thus enhancing their overall perceived value and ultimately driving purchase intentions.Finally,based on dual-process theory,this study explores the mechanism of functional interactivity on users’ purchases in the shopping virtual world.Guided by the hierarchical structure of functional features,this section extracts and condenses specific functional features by comparing the new model of live streaming commerce as a shopping virtual world with other shopping virtual worlds and analyzes their practical utility in promoting purchases.It was found that functional features can activate two internal mechanisms.One is a conscious brain cognitive process,in which functional features are transformed into information signals mechanism in shopping virtual worlds,while the other is an unconscious brain cognitive process depicted as an automatic habit mechanism,in which functional features stimulate users to repeatedly perform specific behaviors in shopping virtual worlds.Specifically,functional features significantly increase users’ purchase intentions by reducing product quality uncertainty and product fit uncertainty.In addition,functional features significantly and positively influence purchase intention through user habit formation.At the same time,habits moderate the relationship between product quality uncertainty and purchase intention.Based on the above four research contents,this study summarizes these research results and proposes interaction design strategies for uses’ purchase intention enhancement in virtual world.These strategies and suggestions can effectively help developers and operators of virtual worlds to accurately acquire user needs,understand user attitudes,and ultimately attract users to participate in purchasing,enhance the overall effectiveness of virtual worlds,and occupy market share.