Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-021-11149-8

Understanding consumer behavior in the multimedia

context: incorporating gamification in VR-enhanced
web system for tourism e-commerce

Yu-Teng Jang 1 & Pei-Shan Hsieh 1

Received: 7 September 2020 / Revised: 10 April 2021 / Accepted: 3 June 2021 /

Published online: 24 June 2021
# The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021

Abstract
This study aims to investigate how gamification and virtual reality (VR)-enhanced web
services can be integrated to influence consumer behavior in the context of tourism e-
commerce. A gamified VR-enhanced tourism web system (VRTWS) was designed and
developed for this investigation, while a research framework with 12 hypotheses was
proposed and empirically tested by adopting PLS-SEM approach to analyze 208 valid
data collected from survey. The results reveal that both Enjoyment and Activation in
Gamification significantly and positively affected Media Richness. Additionally, Media
Richness significantly and positively affected both Usefulness and Ease of Use in using
VR technology with gamification. Also, a user’s Perceived Value is not only positively
affected by Usefulness and Ease of Use but also Interactivity and Immersion in a gamified
VRTWS. Immersion was found to be positively affected by Presence. Through the
positive effect on Satisfaction, user’s Perceived Value had positive effect on the Intention
toward adoption. The proposed gamified VRTWS and the study results with implications
are expected to be referenced by the researchers and practitioners for managing incorpo-
ration of gamification into designing, developing, and managing their VR-enhanced
service in tourism e-commerce.

Keywords Multimedia technology adoption . Gamification . Electronic commerce . User

behavior . Partial least squares (PLS)

* Yu-Teng Jang
[email protected]

Pei-Shan Hsieh
[email protected]

1
Department of Business Administration, Tunghai University, Taichung City, Taiwan
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1 Introduction

Although COVID-19 pandemics with various prevention procedures have temporarily dam-
aged the tourism industry in many countries, tourism has shown its continuous growth in the
past few years as it was recognized as a substantial and relatively green industry in the world
[4]. The gross output value of the tourism industry has accounted for 10.4% of the global GDP
based on the statistics of World Travel and Tourism Council 2018. Its economy has been
reported to grow by 4.6% (compared with the previous year) and provide various employment
opportunities in tourism sector [108]. Also, the number of employees employed in the tourism
industry has been reported to account for around 9.9% of the global employed population. All
of these facts indicate that the huge demand and service capacity can be the foundation of
tourism industry in contributing to creating a competitive environment for tourism service
providers in running their business. Meanwhile, due to the increasing Internet adoption and the
popularity of online shopping in the past decades, the development of electronic commerce (e-
commerce) has demonstrated a steady growing trend globally [115]. In this regard, although
tourism traditionally has been identified as a “brick-and-mortar” industry, many traditional
travel agencies have stepped into establishing, launching, and operating their websites to create
an online channel to expand and extend their service scope [11, 21, 49]. Emerging iconic start-
ups such as Airbnb and Klook are providing various tourism products online and serving
travelers worldwide through their unique e-commerce models and online service systems [2,
60]. In fulfilling users’ various demands, e-commerce has contributed toward making the
tourism industry a more competitive market. Today, the evolution and advancement of
information and communication technologies (ICTs) have driven the tourism industry to be
largely influenced and reshaped in terms of providing the information of and selling the
tourism products to the users online. Thus, managers in tourism industry have kept thinking of
and exploring possible approaches in creating value for attracting, engaging and retaining their
customers in multi-channel retailing context [49, 97].
With virtual reality (VR) becoming more affordable and accessible with every passing year,
it has been considered to be one of the promising technological elements in various application
domains [96]. Industries such as video games [74], medical training [13], education [87], TV
[8], and entertainment [88] are striving to apply VR technology to their conventional business
and service models to provide their customers a different and novel experience. However, the
research and development of VR in the tourism industry is still in a preliminary stage. Recent
research has studied the context of using VR in providing remote telepresence such that a user
can see, for example, the antiques in museums and visit heritages for the purpose of protection
from damage [56]. This perspective is different from the one in tourism e-commerce, in which
the application of VR is designed to attract as many visitors as possible and provide users (or
potential travelers) a different experience for previewing the tourism attractions, thus increas-
ing conversion rate of buying the tourism products for real traveling (e.g., taking planes to
Japan and enjoying local cuisines) instead of merely in VR. Indeed, as highlighted by
Guttentag [38], integrating VR into tourism sectors will present new challenges. The applica-
tion and development in creating pure VR experience in the tourism sector remain challenging
while new combinations deserve further investigation [38]. Properly combining promising
digital technology with psychological elements would help formulate marketing strategies and
design marketing systems in attracting users for adoption [51, 104]. Therefore, inspired by the
popularity of gamification (as gameful experience has been recognized as one of the important
elements in bringing enjoyable and positive emotions in online learning) [30, 42], our study
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firstly designed and developed a gamified VR-enhanced tourism web system (VRTWS) for
exploring how gamification can play a role with regard to consumer behavior in such a tourism
e-commerce context. This research was conducted with the following as its aims: (1) to
examine how and why potential tourists who are those younger generations accept the
delivered marketing information when the intention of tourism service providers is the
development of VRTWS for publicizing their wares; (2) to explore whether a gamified
VRTWS can help tourism service providers understand potential tourists’ intention to visit
the tourism destination in this digital world; and (3) to verify gamification-and-VR enriched
the ordinary tourism websites’ marketing in today’s highly competitive and fast-changing e-
tourism environment.

2 Literature review

2.1 Viewing VR and gamification as new opportunity for tourism e-commerce

The tourism industry in the digital era has been widely affected by the Internet and techno-
logical advancements in all of its many forms [11]. By adopting a “cyber-enhanced retailing”
e-commerce model, traditional travel agencies have been enabled to establish online websites
that extend their service boundaries as well as provide expanded accessibility and timely
updated product/service information to consumers [54, 97]. Inspired by the continuous
evolution of advanced ICTs, some websites have started to add advanced technological
elements, for instance 360° photos and displays. Although 360° photos and displays can
provide richer information about the tourism attractions to visitors, the perceived value can still
be limited because of certain constrains on control in the interaction process between the users
and tourism service provides [46]. In addition to looking for the experience of seeing the
attractions online, users may start to seek a positive experience when they are adopting and
using new systems or services. As a negative experience may reduce the willingness of users’
intention of adoption, researchers and practitioners continue to devote their efforts to exploring
feasible approaches of increasing positive experience and reducing negative effects by design-
ing suitable service systems and investigating the pros and cons and relationships between the
important factors of using such systems [3, 25, 44, 48, 84]. Meanwhile, as gamification and
VR technology have shown their promising potential to the academic and practical fields [30,
42], this study firstly combines them together to design and construct the investigated tourism
service to form a gamified VRTWS in the study. Gamification has been recognized as an
emerging and important research issue in various research fields. In marketing, consumers are
fond of interesting marketing messages and campaigns. A good gameful experience may
provide a better user experience in the interaction with the major players in the communication
system, which may lead to an elevated brand image, a better engagement rate, and even an
enhanced conversion rate. However, gameful experience may not be easy to define as it is
multidimensional in nature [30]. In the study conducted by Eppmann et al. [30], gameful
experience is considered as a kind of psychological outcome of using a gamified application,
while gamification is a more technical process. Of the latter seeks to enhance an application by
adding game elements in a context where there was no game. Following the definition and
gameful experience scale [GAMEX] proposed by Eppmann et al. [30], our study adopted and
incorporated three major measurement scales (i.e., enjoyment, creative thinking, and
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activation) into our research model in exploring the manner in which gamification can be used
to influence consumer behavior when it comes to a VRTWS.

2.2 Relationship between enjoyment in gamification and media richness

Enjoyment has been considered as an important element in the communication process

between information senders and receivers [76]. Prior studies argued that positive emotions,
such as enjoyment or happiness, could be generated in the process of entertaining [29, 95,
111]. Also pointed out by prior studies, positive emotional experiences (particularly enjoy-
ment) would be highly important for gameful experience [30, 43]. Why is enjoyment so
important? Part of the main reasons is that it is highly possible that the positive feeling of
enjoyment received by the consumers would turn to create positive impact on their attitude
toward the advertised goods, services, or brands [28, 77]. Providing users the feelings of
enjoyment would help capture their attention, and a great deal of involvement and pleasure
during the interaction with a delivered medium would result in positive feelings and emotions
in users’ subject perception [80]. By the means of providing users funny and entertaining
messages with useful information in mobile marketing campaigns has been argued to be more
likely to increase their purchase intention [93]. In our study, the operational definition for the
dimension of “enjoyment in gamification” refers to the extent to which a user’s enjoyable
feelings about the games in VR.
In media richness domain, media richness theory (MRT) was proposed by the scholars Daft
and Lengel [24]. Media richness refers to the communication ability provided by specific
media in a certain period of time. A higher level of media richness is reached if the selected
media can deliver relatively richer and easy-to-understand information [24, 73]. If the deliv-
ered information is relatively vague, then the media richness tends to be low as the receivers
(e.g., users or consumers) would need to take more effort to interpret and understand the
delivered information [24, 73]. MRT argues that all communication media may vary in their
ability in enabling users in communication [26]. The extent of such an ability is known as a
medium’s “richness.” In this study, we incorporated the gamification (by designing games for
providing gameful experience) into the VRTWS. Users (such as consumers) may experience a
different way in receiving information compared with a traditional tourism website. Enjoy-
ment, the element of gameful experience, was postulated to significantly and positively affect
media richness in the study. Therefore, our first hypothesis is postulated as:

H1: User’s enjoyable feeling from the gamified media would positively influence his/her
perceived richness regarding the media.

2.3 Relationship between creative thinking in gamification and media richness

Agogué et al. [1] explored the impact of gamification on learning has shown the possibility of
improving learning by the process of gamification. As an attempt, Hakak et al. [42] also
proposed a cloud-assisted method in applying gamification to learning. Through gamification,
the communication efficiency in learning would be increased. Creativity, defined as the ability
to change existing things in prior literature, may be fostered by the process of gamification
[57]. Through gamification, players’ imagination may be stimulated, thus making them more
creative [30]. As creative thinking is one of the major gameful experience scales adopted in the
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study [30], it is postulated to positively influence media richness in the proposed context of a
VRTWS.

H2: User’s feeling of creative thinking from the gamified media would positively influence
his/her perceived richness regarding the media.

2.4 Relationship between activation in gamification and media richness

The dimension of activation is introduced in the study of constructing and validating a gameful
experience scale [GAMEX] conducted by Eppmann et al. [30]. Through gamification, players
may feel excited, energized, and activated. Gamification has been argued to have the ability to
increase the motivation of the players in the interaction process [30]. With gamification,
participants’ willingness to join and act would also be increased. Compared with ordinary
tourism websites (e.g., https://en.liontravel.com/) in which users only can use the browser on
their PCs or mobile devices to check tourism information, the proposed VRTWS allows users
to experience free exploration and interact with the system by performing gameful tasks, thus
increasing the motives and willingness of the players in participating in VRTWS.
Consequently, activation in gamification is postulated to positively affect media richness.

H3: User’s feeling of activation from the gamified media would positively influence his/her
perceived richness regarding the media.

2.5 Relationships between media richness, usefulness, and ease of use

Suggested by Davis [25], “usefulness” and “ease of use” are two important factors in association
with adopting new information technology. In addition to the attitude toward adopting new
technology, “usefulness” and “ease of use” have been also widely adopted to study users’ intention
in adopting new types of information, interaction, and business models [5, 25, 61, 63, 91].
“Usefulness,” in general, refers to the extent that a user believes that his/her performance would
be enhanced by adopting a specific approach (such as a system), whereas “ease of use” generally
refers to the degree to which a user believes that using a particular system would be free of effort
[25]. If a system is too difficult to use, the performance benefits of its usage will be outweighed by
the effort of using it. In general, users are concerned with both usefulness and ease of use in choosing
and adopting new technologies in meeting their specific goals. Based on the perspective from media
richness, the level of media richness tends to be higher as the delivered information is informative
and clear [24]. In a higher media richness context, the information receivers would take less effort to
interpret and understand the delivered information.
Jacob, Guéguen, and Petr (2010) examined how media richness affected a tourism website,
and found out that the greatest degree of media richness (i.e., 360° navigation and street
sounds) resulted in the most positive evaluations of the tourism website [52]. Furthermore,
Lim and Benbasat (2000) viewed e-book readers as a new type of electronic media, and
observed that media richness (video-based vs. text-based representation) positively affects
perceived usefulness [67]. Saeed and Sinnappan (2010) proposed that the media richness of
podcasts and Second Life are positively related to the ease of use [92]. Similarly, Heinrichs
et al. (2008) revealing that media richness is positively related to the usefulness and ease of use
29344 Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365

about the e-learning [45]. Therefore, different media combinations (presentation types) repre-
sent different levels of media richness, which could then be associated with the perceived
usefulness of the e-learning experience [67]. In addition, some studies have also shown the
significant effect of perceived media richness on usefulness [70] and ease of use [16] of e-
commerce and e-learning systems respectively.
Considering our study context is different from conventional tourism websites in the way of
delivering information, the proposed gamified VRTWS contains and conveys richer informa-
tion in interacting with users, which allows the users to receive more comprehensive and
timely information. In addition, VRTWS also provides the users a certain degree of flexibility
in controlling the interaction and communication with the system, and thus may increase the
perceived “usefulness” and “ease of use.” Therefore, hypotheses, H4 and H5, are postulated
as:

H4: User’s perceived richness regarding the media positively influences his/her perceived
usefulness.
H5: User’s perceived richness regarding the media positively influences his/her perceived
ease of use.

2.6 Relationships between usefulness, ease of use, and perceived value

Derived from technology acceptance perspective [25], when an individual feels that a system
would help them perform better while being easy to use, the perceived usefulness as well as the
perceived ease of use would increase. It is argued that the adopted technology (e.g., system) as
well as the business would bring value and benefits to the users when the perceived usefulness
and ease of use are high [5, 25]. Value is the overall assessment on the effectiveness (e.g., the
expected performance) and the cost (e.g., time and effort) regarding the usage of a particular
product, service, system, or application [20, 84, 113]. In addition, perceived value is a
relatively psychological dimension that is measured by users’ own opinions instead of
researchers’ observations [33]. Prior study has shown the positive relationship between useful
information and perceived value [10]. Useful information has been identified as valuable even
when delivered in an online advertising context [59]. In addition, using emerging technology
such as VR in movement therapy on the functional recovery of the upper extremity for
subacute stroke patients has been considered useful and valuable [20]. Similarly, ease of use
has been argued to have a significant impact on the adoption of e-commerce information
system and new technologies [34, 94]. On the basis of prior literature, we considered the
usefulness and ease of use as two important dimensions that may positively influence the
perceived value in our study context. Thus, hypotheses H6 and H7 are postulated as:

H6: User’s perceived usefulness positively influences his/her perceived value.

H7: User’s perceived ease of use positively influences his/her perceived value.

2.7 Relationship between interactivity and perceived value

Interactivity was argued as a part of evolution ontology and epistemology of new

communication technologies in general, particularly of computer systems as media
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[85]. It naturally exists in a two-way communication and interaction between users and
systems. More specifically, interactivity refers to the extent to which a user can partic-
ipate in modifying the content and form of a mediated environment in real time [66, 75,
99, 109]. Marketers usually add interactive elements to formulate their marketing strat-
egies and design marketing systems in attracting potential users as interactive marketing
campaigns have proven helpful in drawing consumers’ attention and increasing the
engagement rate [51, 104]. Lee & Kim (2021) proposed interactivity is defined as two-
way user-machine interaction with timely reactions under the user’s control, and inter-
activity can assist user decision-making in the VR tourism context [62]. A higher degree
of interactivity would provide users better experience in interacting with the system with
better information control in the two-way communication process, thus enhancing the
value perceived by the users [69, 71]. Moreover, previous studies have examined the
relationship between interactivity and values in the e-retailing context [112]. Also,
interactivity has positive effects on users’ perceived value of websites [18, 102]. As
the proposed VRTWS enables users to explore the VR tourism attraction and commu-
nicate with the system in a relatively interactive way, the perceived value is expected to
be positively influenced by interactivity. Therefore, hypothesis H8 is postulated as:

H8: Interactivity positively influences perceived value.

2.8 Relationship between presence and immersion

Presence is the concept firstly proposed to illustrate the long-distance real object in the remote
operating system. Specifically, presence refers to the extent to which an individual’s experi-
ence of an environment from the media [58, 64, 99]. In other words, presence describes the
realism level perceived by the users based on their relative information on the physical
environment as well as indirect environment (such as in a VR context). In addition, a prior
study has pointed out the importance of presence in attaining better flow experience and
effectiveness in constructing tourism websites [98].
Immersion is another important dimension in the gamified environment [55]. It is a
subjective and short-lived experience and the state of an individual in which he or she
would concentrate his or her attention on a smaller scale; at the same time, the irrelevant
perceptions would tend to be ignored while a sense of control in manipulating the
perceived environment would be created [55, 105]. With users’ consciousness fully
integrated with the immersion, users would tend to completely focus on one thing and
forget about distractions. Additionally, under such an immersive state, people would tend
to ignore the lapse of time [105]. Moreover, a prior study argued that a higher degree of
realism would bring users a higher level of immersive experience in online game
contexts [106]. Furthermore, Mütterlein (2018) confirmed that presence has a direct
and positive influence on immersion by using HTC Vive devices as VR equipment
and VR contents (“The Body VR” or “VR The Diner Duo”) [79]. As our study considers
the plausibly positive linkage between presence and immersion in the proposed context
of gamified VRTWS, hypothesis H9 is consequently postulated as:

H9: Presence positively influences immersion.

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2.9 Relationship between immersion and perceived value

In the research domain of gaming, the concept of immersion partly overlaps with flow in terms
of creating a perceived distortion of time and challenging a person to get, and stay, involved in
a task [55]. However, flow particularly refers to an optimal experience (that is usually an
extreme psychological mode such as a basketball player suddenly got the right feeling and
scored high points in a short period of time), whereas immersion is an experience describing
the users’ attention to tasks through degrees of engagement [23, 55]. Many game players seek
an immersive experience when playing games. As immersive experience is identified as being
important in VR contexts [55] and it is postulated that immersion would provide users a good
experience in the environment, they can focus on what they are interested in without dealing
with external disturbances, thus enhancing perceived value for users. Gilmore and Pine (2007)
identified the perceived value as a consequence of immersion in the field of m-commerce [36].
In addition, Ltifi (2018) described perceived value enables a consideration of all emotional
experience that it seems particularly relevant with immersion in an online experiential envi-
ronment. Furthermore, Ltifi (2018) confirmed that immersion positively influences the per-
ceived value of m-services [72]. Similarly, Charfi (2014) verified that the perceived value is
strongly influenced by immersion in the experiential environment of the site [14]. Conse-
quently, hypothesis H10 is postulated as:

H10: Immersion positively influences perceived value.

2.10 Relationship between perceived value and satisfaction

Perceived value reflects the overall assessment on the tangible/intangible benefits and costs
perceived by the consumers. That is to say, perceived value is the judgment of costs and
benefits that is based on people’s subjective pair [20, 84, 100, 113]; consumers tend to
consider a product or service as valuable on the basis of their judgment of whether the adopted
product or service can fulfill their needs [9, 83], as well as tending to evaluate the value of the
information they received even when it is delivered for advertising and marketing purposes
[28, 68, 83]. Typically, satisfaction reflects the comparison results between one’s expected and
actual performance after experiencing the adopted product or service [81, 82]. If the actual
performance equals or exceeds the expected performance, the consumers tend to be satisfied.
The relationship between perceived value and satisfaction has been explored and studied in
various contexts of B2B [82], B2C [90], online [15], and off-line businesses [53], however, it
hasn’t been tested in the proposed context of the gamified VRTWS. As we considered that the
perceived value is very likely to positively influence satisfaction in the study, hypothesis H11
is postulated as:

H11: Perceived value positively influences satisfaction.

2.11 Relationship between satisfaction and intention to adopt

On the basis of prior literature, satisfaction is identified as being important in positively

influencing users’ intention of adopting specific products, services, new technology, or
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Fig. 1 The research framework of the study

innovative systems in various research contexts [68, 78, 82, 114]. A consumer’s higher level of
satisfaction would lead to a higher intention of adopting, keep using, or re-purchasing the
selected products/services [19, 53, 68, 82, 114]. In our study context, compared with ordinary
tourism websites, the proposed gamified VRTWS is expected to provide a better experience
with higher satisfaction, which is very likely to positively affect the intention of adoption.
Consequently, hypothesis H12 is postulated as:

H12: Satisfaction positively influences intention to adopt.

3 Research framework and the proposed gamified VR-enhanced tourism

system

3.1 Research framework

The study developed twelve hypotheses to form the research framework in investigating how
gamification can influence consumer behavior in the proposed context of VRTWS. The
research framework of the study is derived and illustrated in Fig. 1.

3.2 The design and implementation of the proposed gamified VR-enhanced tourism
system

To test the proposed research framework, we first designed and developed a tourism e-
commerce web system (with LazyDoor as the brand name) for positioning as a service
providing tourism information as well as products and services on the Internet. Different from
conventional online tourism websites (e.g., https://en.liontravel.com/1) that typically show
pictures and itinerary information for tourism attractions, LazyDoor (see Fig. 2) provides an

1
Lion Travel Co., LTD is one of the largest travel agencies providing tourism services both online (on https://
www.liontravel.com for both Chinese and English Version) and offline (in their 88 physical retailing stores in
major cities in Taiwan and 14 physical retailing stores overseas). Its stock symbol in the Taiwan Stock Market is
2713.
Source: https://www.liontravel.com/retail/
29348 Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365

Fig. 2 The proposed VR-enhanced tourism web system (VRTWS): LazyDoor

embedded VR function and content that we established in advance by utilizing Unity [103], a
real-time development software for creating 2D, 3D, VR, and AR visualizations for our
tourism attractions. To further incorporate gamification in our VRTWS, we then utilized
CoSpaces Edu to design games for constructing the proposed gamified VRTWS [22]. The
rule-based gamification mechanism is designed to follow the principles: (1) users are allowed
to experience free exploration in the scene, (2) tasks in the game are triggered when users
move into certain area or contact specific characters, (3) tasks are designed to facilitate users’
exploration in the scene (for example, Treasure Hunt requires users to find the listed items in a
given period of time, and (4) tourism related information (e.g. history of the spot, ticket
information, marketing messages, etc.) and scores are provided to the users immediately once a
task is accomplished in the game. As shown in Fig. 3, our gamified VRTWS provides users
both gameful and VR experience in the process of delivering marketing functions and
messages for e-commerce in tourism. In addition, the selected Dali Art Plaza is an emerging
hot sightseeing spot in Taiwan where the seated blue giant and big rose are all real on the
buildings.
The architecture of the proposed gamified VRTWS is shown in Fig. 4. Users are allowed to
interact with the system via web or mobile device based on his/her preference (however the
study is conducted under the control that all participants use the VR headset and controller
provided by us to maintain the consistency). For each tourism attraction, VR content/scene is
created in advance and embedded into the proposed tourism web service of Lazydoor. Games
are designed by using the third-party tool, CoSpaces Edu, for providing users gameful

Fig. 3 Snapshot of our design of the proposed gamified VRTWS and its VR user experience mode for tourism
attraction: Dali Art Plaza in Taichung Software Park, Taiwan
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Fig. 4 Architecture of the proposed gamified VRTWS

experience. In addition, the proposed gamified VRTWS combines the system design philos-
ophy of three levels of information and services:

& Level I: Tourism Web System (TWS) provides conventional information and services for
tourism products.
& Level II: VR-enhanced Tourism Web System (VRTWS) provides VR feature (without
gameful experience) plus conventional information and services for tourism products.
& Level III: Gamified VRTWS further provides gameful experience based on the foundation
of VRTWS.

In the study, the tested hypotheses and validated research framework focus on Level III
scenario, in which gamification and virtual reality (VR)-enhanced web services are integrated
for the investigation.

4 Empirical analysis and results

4.1 Questionnaire development

In the study, in order to ensure content validity, the questionnaire items (observed indicators)
of the research framework were adapted from literature review. A 5-point Likert scale, ranging
from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5), was used to measure questionnaire items of
each dimension (latent variable) in the proposed research framework. Before formal survey, a
pretest in a small group was conducted in advance to make sure the questionnaires could be
clearly understood and validly measured. According to the feedbacks and results from the
pretest, modifications on the questionnaire items were then made for improving reliability for
formal survey.
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4.2 Analytical methodology: PLS-SEM analysis

This study adopted PLS-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach to analyze the
collected data and test the proposed research framework [39, 41]. PLS-SEM has been
recognized as a powerful multivariate analysis technique as well as path modeling tool for
empirical data analyses as it can be used for modeling latent constructs with minimum
restrictions even under the condition of small sample size and non-normality [17, 40, 101].
SmartPLS 3.0, a PLS-SEM analytical software, was used to test the outer model as well as the
inner model of the research framework for the collected data. In PLS-SEM, the outer model
(also called the measurement model) specifies the relationships between the manifest variables
and the latent variables; while the inner model (also known as the structural model) indicates
the relationships between the latent variables of the proposed research framework. In addition,
uni-dimensionality checks for all constructs were carried out before conducting the outer
model (measurement model) tests and inner model (structural model) tests in the study [39,
41]. The following sections elaborate the procedure and analytical results of the data collec-
tion, descriptive analyses, and PLS-SEM statistics.

4.3 Data collection and descriptive statistics

According to a Greenlight Insights report, the survey’s virtual reality statistics show that 55%
of Generation Z (born 1997–2005) respondents who say they are familiar with VR have also
tried it [50]. In addition, 43% of Generation Z use OTAs (Online Travel Agents) to plan trips
and take an average of 29 days per year [31]. Therefore, customers who are those potential
tourists accept the delivered marketing information by a gamified VR-enhanced tourism web
system (VRTWS) are definitely skewed toward the younger generations. Therefore, the
empirical data of the study were collected mainly at the Tunghai University campus in Taiwan.
On the basis of convenience sampling, participants were invited to join the test of experiencing
the gamified VRTWS. The participants who accepted our test invitation were then led to our
test site (a place with our experiment equipment all set) based on the schedule arrangement.
Before each test started, our research team members gave the participants a brief introduction
to using the VR headset and controlling the movements in the VRTWS (see Fig. 5). The
designed gamified tasks in the VRTWS were also described. For example, the participants can
find “Wally” (the virtual characters based on the story of “Where’s Wally?”) by operating the
remote controller to get points, and contacting and clicking on other people to get more
information about this scenery (Dali Art Plaza in Taichung Software Park) in our designed
gamified tasks.

Fig. 5 Snapshot of the user experience in the proposed gamified VRTWS

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For each participant, he or she was asked to fill in the research questionnaires
immediately after experiencing the gamified VRTWS. The test time for each participant
was around 30 min in average. In total, 234 samples were gathered. Among 234
empirical samples, a few were discarded as they were identified as incomplete and
invalid. Overall, 208 usable samples were retained and used for analysis. Of the 208
usable respondents, males were 76 (36.6%) while females were 132 (63.4%). Because of
the nature of convenience sampling at the management college of our university, the
female percentage is a little higher than that for males. It is important to retain as many
participants as possible. In the study, except for one item (U1), there is no statistically
significant difference (with a confidence level of 0.95) found in all t-tests on two groups
(male and female) for all questionnaire items. As the p value of the exception item (U1)
is 0.032, which is very close to 0.05 with a significance level of one star (*), it was
decided to retain the exception item (U1) in the subsequent analyses for keeping as many
items as possible in preserving the integrity of the analysis [6]. In terms of age, 150
(72%) were in the 15–20 years age group, 51 (24.5%) were in the 21–30 years age
group, and the remaining 7 (3.5%) were 31 years old or older. Therefore, the main
participants represent the potential tourists who are those Generation Z accept the
delivered marketing information by a gamified VR-enhanced tourism web system
(VRTWS).
As for educational background, 192 (92.3%) participants were college level, whereas 16
(7.7%) were at the postgraduate level. Two hundred and eight (100%) participants have the
experience in looking up for tourism information on the Internet for at least 3 years. None of
the participants have used VR technology to access online tourism services. For the yearly
traveling budget, 39 (18.8%) participants have a yearly budget of less than NT$10,000, 131
(63%) participants have a yearly budget between NT$10,000 and NT$39,999, 26 (12.5%)
participants have a yearly budget between NT$40,000 and NT$59,999, 7 (3.4%) participants
have a yearly budget between NT$60,000 and NT$99,999 group, and the remaining 5 (2.3%)
participants have a yearly budget of more than NT$100,000. Table 1 lists the descriptive
statistics of the surveyed questionnaire items and factors in the proposed research framework
as well as their literature sources.

4.4 Test for Uni-dimensionality of all blocks

To check the uni-dimensionality of a block, there are three available tools and indicators:
(1) principal component analysis of a block, (2) composite reliability (CR), and (3)
Cronbach’s alpha (α) [101]. From the statistics in principal component analysis, if the
first eigenvalue in the correlation matrix of a block is larger than 1 and the second
eigenvalue is less than 1 (or at least very far away from the first one), then the block of
manifest variables is identified as unidimensional. In addition, when CR value and
Cronbach’s alpha value are greater than 0.7, the block can also be considered as
unidimensional [39, 41]. In the study (shown in Table 2), the first eigenvalues of all
ten blocks in principal component analysis are larger than 1 and the second eigenvalues
of all ten blocks are less than 1, and the statistics (ranging from 0.905 to 0.979 in CR
value and 0.823 to 0.967 in Cronbach’s alpha (α)) in uni-dimensionality tests all
exceeded the threshold of 0.7, thus concluding the uni-dimensionality was supported
by all three aforementioned tools.
29352 Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of measurement scales

Factor Item Concept Mean S.D. Source/

Adapted
from

Enjoyment in ∙ EiG1 The games in VR are interesting. 3.94 0.904 [30]

Gamification ∙ EiG2 I like to play the games in VR. 3.88 0.948
(EiG) ∙ EiG3 I enjoy playing the games in VR. 3.93 0.935
∙ EiG4 Playing the games in VR is pleasurable. 4.05 0.902
Creative Thinking in ∙ CTiG1 Playing the games in VR inspires my imagination. 3.92 0.914 [30]
Gamification ∙ CTiG2 I felt like I could explore new things when I was 4.16 0.853
(CTiG) playing the games in VR.
∙ CTiG3 I felt like I was on an adventure when I was playing 4.11 0.944
the games in VR.
Activation in ∙ AiG1 I felt active when I was playing the games in VR. 4.02 0.890 [30]
Gamification ∙ AiG2 I felt excited when I was playing the games in VR. 4.06 0.835
(AiG)
Media Richness ∙ MR1 I feel that VR provides the information that I need. 3.95 0.829 [12, 26]
(MR) ∙ MR2 I feel that I can get instant feedback by using VR. 3.96 0.886
∙ MR3 I feel VR could provide me multiple clues. 4.09 0.869
∙ MR4 I feel that the information is presented in a more 3.89 0.972
natural way via VR.
Usefulness (U) ∙ U1 The adoption of VR technology in tourism 4.32 0.772 [25]
guidance is considered helpful.
∙ U2 VR technology allows me to get more information 4.31 0.738
about the tourism destination.
∙ U3 I feel VR is useful. 4.10 0.859
Ease of Use (EOU) ∙ EOU1 It doesn't take too much effort to use VR. 3.96 0.997 [25, 56]
∙ EOU2 The interaction with VR is clear and easy. 4.14 0.813
∙ EOU3 I feel VR is easy to use. 4.16 0.847
Perceived Value ∙ PV1 I feel that it is worthwhile to spend the time to 4.25 0.765 [100, 113]
(PV) experience the tourism destination through VR.
∙ PV2 I feel that it is worthwhile to make the mental effort 4.25 0.814
to experience the tourism destination through
VR.
∙ PV3 I feel that it is worthwhile to make the physical 4.19 0.839
effort to experience the tourism destination
through VR.
Interactivity (IT) ∙ IT1 I feel that the adoption of VR could help me 4.14 0.843 [66]
achieve two-way interaction with the system.
∙ IT2 I feel VR could let me control the information that I 4.08 0.878
want to know.
Presence (PR) ∙ PR1 The objects or characters that I saw in VR made me 3.97 0.865 [64, 107]
feel like I was in that place.
∙ PR2 It felt like I was able to reach out and touch the 3.78 1.012
objects or characters that I saw in VR.
∙ PR3 I have a feeling of being in the environment that I 4.01 0.901
saw in VR.
∙ PR4 I want to try to touch what I saw in VR. 3.75 1.027
Immersion (IMS) ∙ IMS1 The VR context has largely caught my attention. 4.26 0.800 [55]
∙ IMS2 I was very focused in the VR context. 4.19 0.850
∙ IMS3 When using the VR, I felt that time passed faster. 3.73 1.088
∙ IMS4 When using the VR, I felt that I was at the tourism 3.94 0.969
destination.
Satisfaction (SA) ∙ SA1 Compared with the expected situation, I am 4.15 0.826 [82]
satisfied with the VR experience.
∙ SA2 Compared with the expected situation, I am 4.11 0.845
satisfied with using VR in tourism guidance.
Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365 29353

Table 1 (continued)

Factor Item Concept Mean S.D. Source/

Adapted
from

∙ SA3 Overall, I am satisfied with the VR experience of 4.25 0.782

this time.
∙ SA4 Compared with the expected situation, I am 4.11 0.845
satisfied with the tourism information provided
by VR.
Intention to Adopt ∙ ITA1 I am willing to go to visit the tourism destination 4.04 0.918 [86, 110]
(ITA) presented in VR.
∙ ITA2 I am willing to recommend the tourism destination 3.80 0.975
which is presented in VR to my friends.
∙ ITA3 I have a high willingness to go to visit the tourism 3.79 1.045
destination presented in VR.
∙ ITA4 Overall, it is highly possible for me to visit the 3.95 0.916
tourism destination presented in VR.

4.5 Test of the outer model (measurement model)

The outer model (also known as measurement model) estimation results together with the outer
loadings and the average variance extracted (AVE) measures, are shown in Table 2. In PLS-SEM
analysis, the outer loadings represent the loading values of the reflective manifest variables to their
respective latent variable, and it can be used to assess the reliability of individual item. Suggested by
prior studies [40, 89], when a loading value is larger than 0.7, the individual item reliability is
considered as acceptable. In the study, all outer loadings are found larger than the suggested standard
of 0.7. Based on prior study [32], the convergent validity of a reflective construct can be assessed by
AVE measures with a threshold of 0.5. In our study (as shown in Table 2), all AVE scores (ranging
from 0.709 to 0.940) exceeded the suggested standard of 0.5, concluding the convergent validity
was supported by the results. Also, suggested by Fornell and Larcker [32], the discriminant validity
of the constructs in the model can be assessed by checking the square root of the AVE measure of
each construct and see if it is larger than the estimated correlations shared between the construct and
other constructs in the model. The analytical results (shown in Table 3) revealed that the discriminant
validity of the constructs was acceptable as the square root of the AVE measure of each construct
was larger than the correlations of the construct with other constructs. Moreover, the matrix of
loadings and cross-loadings for all reflective items can also be used as additional evidence in
assessing the convergent validity and discriminant validity of the constructs by checking whether
each cross-loading difference is higher than the suggested threshold of 0.1 [35, 47]. The convergent
validity and discriminant validity of the study was concluded to be supported by Table 4.

4.6 Inner model (structural model) results

In PLS-SEM analysis, the inner model (also known as structural model) specifies the rela-
tionships between latent variables. The inner model results together with the estimated path
coefficients for the endogenous latent variables and R-square statistics are illustrated in Fig. 6
and Table 5.
29354 Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365

Table 2 Block uni-dimensionality checks, loadings, and average variance extracted (n = 208)

Latent variable Manifest Loadings First Second Composite Cronbach’s AVE

variable eigenvalue eigenvalue Reliability α
(CR)

Enjoyment in ∙ EiG1 0.910 3.480 0.249 0.964 0.950 0.870

Gamification (EiG) ∙ EiG2 0.948
∙ EiG3 0.946
∙ EiG4 0.926
Creative Thinking in ∙ CTiG1 0.882 2.490 0.356 0.936 0.895 0.830
Gamification (CTiG) ∙ CTiG2 0.942
∙ CTiG3 0.908
Activation in ∙ AiG1 0.915 1.701 0.299 0.919 0.823 0.850
Gamification (AiG) ∙ AiG2 0.929
Media Richness (MR) ∙ MR1 0.835 2.896 0.438 0.913 0.871 0.724
∙ MR2 0.851
∙ MR3 0.891
∙ MR4 0.824
Usefulness (U) ∙ U1 0.879 2.316 0.416 0.910 0.848 0.771
∙ U2 0.896
∙ U3 0.860
Ease of Use (EOU) ∙ EOU1 0.790 2.282 0.507 0.905 0.832 0.760
∙ EOU2 0.895
∙ EOU3 0.925
Perceived Value (PV) ∙ PV1 0.969 2.820 0.110 0.979 0.967 0.940
∙ PV2 0.977
∙ PV3 0.963
Interactivity (IT) ∙ IT1 0.929 1.729 0.271 0.927 0.843 0.864
∙ IT2 0.930
Presence (PR) ∙ PR1 0.854 3.095 0.407 0.932 0.900 0.773
∙ PR2 0.895
∙ PR3 0.918
∙ PR4 0.849
Immersion (IMS) ∙ IMS1 0.892 2.835 0.634 0.906 0.851 0.709
∙ IMS2 0.859
∙ IMS3 0.735
∙ IMS4 0.872
Satisfaction (SA) ∙ SA1 0.914 3.215 0.379 0.942 0.918 0.804
∙ SA2 0.931
∙ SA3 0.861
∙ SA4 0.879
Intention to Adopt (ITA) ∙ ITA1 0.928 3.460 0.225 0.962 0.947 0.865
∙ ITA2 0.921
∙ ITA3 0.937
∙ ITA4 0.935

EiG, Enjoyment in Gamification; CTiG, Creative Thinking in Gamification; AiG, Activation in Gamification;
MR, Media Richness; U, Usefulness; EOU, Ease of Use; PV, Perceived Value; IT, Interactivity; PR, Presence;
IMS, Immersion; SA, Satisfaction; ITA, Intention to Adopt

The empirical results (Fig. 6 and Table 5) reveal that both Enjoyment in Gamification (β =
0.357***, p < 0.001) and Activation in Gamification (β = 0.216*, p = 0.046) significantly and
positively affect Media Richness. However, Creative Thinking in Gamification (β = 0.180, p =
0.067) is not significantly associated with Media Richness. In addition, Media Richness was
found to significantly and positively affect both Usefulness (β = 0.701***, p < 0.001) and Ease
of Use (β = 0.489***, p < 0.001) in using VR technology with gamification element for
marketing in tourism e-commerce. Furthermore, users’ Perceived Value is significantly and
Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365 29355

Table 3 Inter-construct correlations and square root of AVE measure of twelve constructs

EiG CTiG AiG MR U EOU PV IT PR IMS SA ITA

EiG 0.933
CTiG 0.660 0.911
AiG 0.737 0.823 0.922
MR 0.635 0.593 0.627 0.851
U 0.542 0.497 0.502 0.701 0.878
EOU 0.451 0.402 0.361 0.489 0.575 0.872
PV 0.576 0.540 0.537 0.716 0.669 0.622 0.970
IT 0.553 0.561 0.538 0.741 0.660 0.543 0.672 0.930
PR 0.547 0.587 0.568 0.675 0.543 0.474 0.639 0.591 0.879
IMS 0.599 0.652 0.633 0.729 0.636 0.544 0.712 0.657 0.847 0.842
SA 0.662 0.628 0.654 0.755 0.692 0.632 0.860 0.761 0.860 0.788 0.897
ITA 0.613 0.611 0.602 0.684 0.548 0.464 0.663 0.602 0.616 0.631 0.761 0.930

EiG, Enjoyment in Gamification; CTiG, Creative Thinking in Gamification; AiG, Activation in Gamification;
MR, Media Richness; U, Usefulness; EOU, Ease of Use; PV, Perceived Value; IT, Interactivity; PR, Presence;
IMS, Immersion; SA, Satisfaction; ITA, Intention to Adopt

positively affected by not only Usefulness (β = 0.198**, p = 0.009) and Ease of Use (β =
0.216***, p < 0.001) in using VR but also the constructs of Interactivity (β = 0.203**, p =
0.006) and Immersion (β = 0.335***, p < 0.001) in the study. Presence is found to have a
significant and positive effect on Immersion (β = 0.847***, p < 0.001). Moreover, users’
Perceived Value also significantly and positively affects their perceived Satisfaction (β =
0.860***, p < 0.001). Last but not least, users’ Satisfaction would significantly and positively
affect their intention of adoption (β = 0.761***, p < 0.001). Overall, the hypotheses (H1 and
H3 to H12) were found to be supported by the empirical results, while the hypothesis (H2) was
not supported in the study.

5 Discussion

Responding to the need of better understanding how gamification and VR-enhanced web
services can be integrated to influence consumer behavior in tourism e-commerce context, this
study designed and implemented a gamified VRTWS, proposed a research framework with 12
postulated hypotheses, collected empirical data from 208 participants, and adopted PLS-SEM
approach to analyze the research data and validate the framework. Several findings are
revealed by our empirical study results to show that VR could contribute the tourism industry
under the likely long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
First, both enjoyment in gamification and activation in gamification are found to have
significant and positive impact on media richness. These results suggest both enjoyment and
activation elements in gamification would contribute to the increase of media richness for the
delivered information. In other words, by providing users an enjoyable and activated experi-
ence in the gamified VRTWS, the degree of the ability in enabling users in communication is
increased. In addition, enjoyment, with a larger path coefficient (0.357***), has a stronger
effect on media richness than activation (0.216*). Creating an enjoyable user experience may
be considered the priority in such a context compared with activating the users in increasing
media richness levels.
29356 Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365

Table 4 Matrix of loadings and cross-loadings of twelve constructs

Latent variable Item EiG CTiG AiG MR U EOU PV IT PR IMS SA ITA

Enjoyment in ∙ EiG1 .910 .549 .647 .597 .497 .443 .520 .516 .518 .545 .600 .537
Gamification (EiG) ∙ EiG2 .948 .625 .689 .587 .503 .408 .536 .533 .491 .537 .622 .583
∙ EiG3 .946 .655 .705 .583 .499 .402 .523 .522 .474 .552 .613 .572
∙ EiG4 .926 .633 .708 .599 .523 .428 .571 .493 .557 .600 .632 .594
Creative Thinking in ∙ CTiG1 .597 .882 .693 .552 .411 .369 .453 .523 .531 .585 .524 .552
Gamification ∙ CTiG2 .589 .942 .765 .531 .472 .375 .501 .511 .554 .599 .583 .527
(CTiG) ∙ CTiG3 .616 .908 .790 .536 .476 .353 .521 .498 .519 .598 .610 .590
Activation in ∙ AiG1 .640 .788 .915 .551 .483 .326 .474 .522 .516 .574 .601 .552
Gamification (AiG) ∙ AiG2 .716 .732 .929 .604 .446 .339 .514 .474 .531 .592 .605 .558
Media Richness (MR) ∙ MR1 .496 .471 .516 .835 .604 .405 .554 .692 .535 .527 .630 .568
∙ MR2 .522 .501 .555 .851 .519 .354 .582 .626 .526 .603 .584 .564
∙ MR3 .613 .548 .599 .891 .667 .437 .642 .645 .592 .674 .699 .561
∙ MR4 .520 .494 .458 .824 .584 .460 .653 .558 .641 .669 .649 .638
Usefulness (U) ∙ U1 .457 .389 .394 .587 .879 .481 .549 .533 .477 .529 .583 .505
∙ U2 .514 .478 .507 .649 .896 .450 .547 .596 .477 .573 .588 .457
∙ U3 .456 .439 .420 .610 .860 .578 .661 .606 .476 .569 .648 .483
Ease of Use (EOU) ∙ EOU1 .344 .263 .229 .314 .449 .790 .506 .342 .359 .423 .476 .334
∙ EOU2 .405 .388 .365 .497 .532 .895 .530 .558 .423 .462 .570 .434
∙ EOU3 .426 .387 .338 .451 .520 .925 .590 .501 .453 .532 .598 .438
Perceived Value (PV) ∙ PV1 .572 .557 .543 .703 .663 .585 .969 .677 .633 .700 .854 .677
∙ PV2 .575 .521 .539 .694 .658 .619 .977 .644 .621 .705 .850 .637
∙ PV3 .528 .490 .477 .684 .625 .606 .963 .631 .603 .665 .794 .615
Interactivity (IT) ∙ IT1 .449 .489 .441 .643 .622 .497 .622 .929 .551 .583 .658 .519
∙ IT2 .579 .555 .560 .734 .606 .512 .627 .930 .548 .639 .699 .600
Presence (PR) ∙ PR1 .442 .470 .467 .618 .527 .441 .613 .588 .854 .759 .685 .575
∙ PR2 .466 .467 .450 .583 .475 .391 .541 .500 .895 .687 .580 .512
∙ PR3 .536 .565 .550 .649 .520 .450 .607 .524 .918 .826 .683 .555
∙ PR4 .475 .559 .527 .515 .376 .380 .474 .459 .849 .692 .567 .521
Immersion (IMS) ∙ IMS1 .556 .625 .619 .692 .592 .521 .685 .641 .753 .892 .749 .607
∙ IMS2 .485 .535 .528 .684 .579 .513 .629 .626 .711 .859 .689 .510
∙ IMS3 .441 .470 .441 .430 .423 .344 .467 .403 .603 .735 .529 .461
∙ IMS4 .528 .557 .527 .617 .531 .436 .597 .520 .773 .872 .668 .539
Satisfaction (SA) ∙ SA1 .623 .532 .568 .674 .607 .595 .760 .669 .660 .733 .914 .665
∙ SA2 .578 .574 .579 .692 .642 .607 .777 .647 .673 .733 .931 .700
∙ SA3 .670 .619 .677 .673 .584 .494 .695 .657 .599 .673 .861 .726
∙ SA4 .506 .528 .524 .668 .645 .566 .845 .644 .643 .688 .879 .640
Intention to Adopt ∙ ITA1 .592 .578 .586 .655 .515 .460 .658 .578 .582 .592 .728 .928
(ITA) ∙ ITA2 .528 .586 .544 .606 .527 .449 .636 .532 .565 .592 .706 .921
∙ ITA3 .588 .578 .576 .657 .481 .409 .582 .581 .570 .568 .687 .937
∙ ITA4 .572 .532 .532 .625 .516 .408 .590 .550 .574 .596 .710 .935

EiG, Enjoyment in Gamification; CTiG, Creative Thinking in Gamification; AiG, Activation in Gamification;
MR, Media Richness; U, Usefulness; EOU, Ease of Use; PV, Perceived Value; IT, Interactivity; PR, Presence;
IMS, Immersion; SA, Satisfaction; ITA, Intention to Adop

With a design of creating enjoyable, energized, and activated user experience, VR can keep
consumers not only interested, but also informed with more reliable, faster, and more
interactive information before going to the destination. Therefore, VR make it contactless
under COVID-19 by providing the participants with better information search and pre-
experiencing the destination. Consumers had a more detailed destination image as well as
minimize the risk related to high expectations, and may reduce the uncertainty of consumers
buying tours online.
Second, both usefulness and ease of use are found to be positively influenced by media
richness. These findings suggest a higher degree of communication ability in delivering
Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365 29357

Fig. 6 The empirical study results

and processing the information provided by the medium (i.e., the proposed gamified
VRTWS) would positively influence a user’s perception on usefulness and ease of use
in adopting the proposed system. Previous studies highlighted the points that users’
perception on usefulness and ease of use would help increase technology adoption as well
as new types of information, interaction, and business models. However, will this apply to
the VR technologies under the context of COVID-19? According to the results in this
study, through the positive impact on media richness, enjoyment and activation in
gamification would have indirect effect on usefulness and ease of use. Therefore, online
tourism service providers (i.e., travel agencies who have websites or apps) may consider
offering an enjoyable and exciting gameful experience to their targeted users during the
communication. This study provides a new lens for studying the adoption of the VR
technologies under COVID-19 restrictions. VR practitioners are suggested to construct
their VR tourism content by using advanced techniques such as 360° scene creation
technologies and incorporating game elements.

Table 5 Structural model (inner model) results

H0 Hypothesis Path coefficient t-statistics p value Hypothesis test result

EiG → MR H1 0.357*** 3.990 0.000092 supported

CTiG → MR H2 0.180 1.840 0.067200 not supported
AiG → MR H3 0.216* 2.005 0.046266 supported
MR → U H4 0.701*** 16.613 0.000000 supported
MR → EOU H5 0.489*** 8.680 0.000000 supported
U→PV H6 0.198** 2.639 0.008948 supported
EOU → PV H7 0.216*** 3.784 0.000202 supported
IT→ PV H8 0.203** 2.794 0.005695 supported
PR→ IMS H9 0.847*** 40.265 0.000000 supported
IMS → PV H10 0.335*** 4.248 0.000033 supported
PV → SA H11 0.860*** 37.734 0.000000 supported
SA → ITA H12 0.761*** 17.854 0.000000 supported

(1) *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001;

(2) EiG, Enjoyment in Gamification; CTiG, Creative Thinking in Gamification; AiG, Activation in Gamification;
MR, Media Richness; U, Usefulness; EOU, Ease of Use; PV, Perceived Value; IT, Interactivity; PR, Presence;
IMS, Immersion; SA, Satisfaction; ITA, Intention to Adopt
29358 Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365

Third, a user’s perceived value is positively influenced by usefulness, ease of use, interac-
tivity, and immersion. Among them, immersion, with a larger path coefficient (0.335*), is
found to have the strongest effect on the perceived value of a user. This implies immersive
experience, which is hard for a user to acquire in conventionally ordinary tourism websites,
may serve as an important factor in enhancing the user’s perceived value in VR contexts. This
finding is similar to a prior study in identifying the importance of immersion in comparing
immersive and non-immersive conditions [55]. In addition, through the strong effect on
immersion (with a path coefficient of 0.847***), presence is found to have indirect and
positive impact on a user’s perceived value. As presence describes the realism level perceived
by the users based on their relative information on the physical environment as well as indirect
environment (such as in a VR context), providing a better experience of presence would help a
user to reach a higher level immersive state and concentrate his or her attention on specific
tasks in the system, thus leading to a higher perceived value. Consequently, under COVID-19,
if users begin to enjoy a VR-driven destination at home more frequently because many
countries have adopted “Stay at Home” policy, then it is a good opportunity for tourism
service providers to create new tour services and a new market about inaccessible destinations
through VR, e.g., heritage sites, jungles, or the North Pole.
Moreover, on the basis of the results, providing a useful and easy-to-use service system
to a user would increase his or her perceived value. Although research contexts are
different, these findings are consistent with prior studies [7, 25, 28, 34, 59, 93] in
validating the relationships between usefulness, ease of use, and perceived value. Further-
more, the results suggest that a user with a higher degree of control in interacting with the
service system would also consider the proposed system more valuable. Improving
interactivity in the interaction process between users and the service system becomes an
important issue to the online tourism service providers. Last but not least, through the
positive impact on satisfaction, a user’s perceived value has been confirmed to have a
positive and indirect impact on intention to adopt.
Although prior study results have demonstrated the importance of satisfaction and its
positive effect on the intention toward adoption [7], under different contexts, this study
contributes to validating the relationships under the proposed gamified VRTWS with the
combination of gamification elements and VR context in delivering tourism service
online. Thus, to increase the intention of adoption, tourism service providers are
suggested to focus on the enhancement of users’ perceived value and satisfaction. As
a result, we justify the effectiveness of VR as promotional purposes under COVID-19,
this study reveals the interaction through VR affects users’ intention to visit the
destinations.
Revealed by our empirical study results, the hypothesis H2 was founded unsupported. This
study results revealed that creative thinking in gamification does not significantly affect media
richness. Media richness may not be affected because the context itself was set for tourism
services. Although we created and provided a VR environment for the users, it is still different
from the view of ordinary video games (e.g., Mario) that are intentionally created to be
imaginative in many ways such as strange characters, cool stories, and gorgeous effects. The
creation of the tourism attraction is realistic for providing the users a better sense of presence in
their experience using the service. Therefore, our designed games with realistic display of the
tourism attractions in the study context of VRTWS may result in the insignificant impact on
media richness.
Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365 29359

6 Implications, conclusion, and limitations & future research

6.1 Implications

On the basis of the proposed system (a gamified VRTWS) and the study results, several
implications are suggested to be referenced by the system designer, developers, marketers, and
managers in the tourism industry (such as online tourism service providers and the traditional
travel agencies who provide web services) in managing the tasks of incorporating gamification
into designing, developing, and managing their VR service application. First, as users (poten-
tial consumers) tend to adopt the service with the delivered information based on their
perceived value and satisfaction, tourism managers are suggested to add the VR function for
travel preview on the website. This may increase the number of people who are willing to go to
visit the tourism destination presented in VR. Second, travel agencies need to improve the
website usefulness and ease of use in order to generate higher value for consumers. According
to this study, travel agencies can effectively increase consumer-perceived usefulness and ease
of use by increasing the richness of media. To increase the richness, travel agencies can add
gamification elements to the process of previewing in VR. Not only can it make consumers
feel entertained, but it also stimulates consumers’ imagination and vitality, which may give
them a better preview experience. In turn, this increases the richness of media and makes
consumers perceive higher usefulness and ease of use, thus make them perceive value. For
example, the VR preview process applied in this study incorporates game elements, activates
the consumer’s motivation, and allows consumers to entertain and generate their own ideas
during the preview process, making them feel that this application is useful to them and is easy
to use. Third, when designing VR, travel agencies can increase the interaction of consumers in
the virtual world because it will increase the consumer’s perceived value—for example, with
the design that allows consumers to move in the virtual space or operate objects in the virtual
world through the controller, or increased interactivity between consumers and VR applica-
tion, through which consumers can get more feedback from the application. These will make
consumers feel more value with VR for travel previews. In the case of this study, our virtual
world allows consumers to see the scene in the virtual world from different angles, and when
the consumer clicks on a specific object, it will jump out of the text that describes the object,
letting consumers get feedback and enabling them to gain useful information by interacting
with VR, thereby making consumers feel the VR application is valuable. Fourth, during the
period of COVID-19 pandemics, many countries have adopted “Stay at Home” policy with
various restrictions on people’s physical traveling [37]. People are not allowed to physically
visit their desired travel attractions at this moment. Alternatively, they may rely more heavily
on the Internet for desired tourism information. Using VR-enhanced tourism web system
would help to add value to traditional travel websites in tourism e-commerce, while incorpo-
rating gamification could provide consumers enjoyable and activated experience without
making them feel bored. Finally, for the travel agencies in some re-opened countries, it is
suggested that they may provide suitable environment (avoid noisy environment) and equip-
ment, such as VR helmets and controllers, to allow consumers to enter an immersive state in
experiencing travel previews. These suggestions may help increase the consumer’s immersive
experience, and when consumers have immersive tour preview experience, it will in turn
increase consumer’s perceived value. Besides, according to the results of this study, the
presence will also affect the immersion of consumers’ tour preview experience. Therefore,
this study suggests that the quality of the scene in the virtual world must be of a certain quality,
29360 Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365

and using high-resolution 360° picture to construct VR content can help make the consumer
perceive a higher sense of presence. Adding background sounds, such as sound of the wind or
running water can also give consumers a more realistic experience and in turn make it easier
for consumers to have an immersive experience. In summary, using VR for travel preview can
ease some problems on traditional travel websites and may increase the number of people who
are willing to go to visit the tourism destination presented in VR on the website. Thus, this
study suggests that travel agencies pay attention to using VR application in tourism. Adding a
VR application with gamified design to the travel website can help tourism service providers
understand potential tourists’ intention to visit the tourism destination. When consumers feel
more perceived value about visiting the tourism destination, their willingness to go to and
recommend the tourism destination presented in VR would be increased. This in turn would
provide opportunity to travel agencies and reduce the uncertainty of consumers buying tours
online.

6.2 Conclusion

This study contributed to exploring how gamification and VR-enhanced web services can be
integrated to influence consumer behavior in tourism e-commerce. A gamified VR-enhanced
tourism web system (VRTWS) was developed and a research framework (with 12 hypotheses)
was proposed for this investigation. Our empirical findings revealed that: (1) both Enjoyment
and Activation in Gamification significantly and positively affected Media Richness, (2) Media
Richness significantly and positively affected both Usefulness and Ease of Use in using VR
technology with gamification, (3) a user’s Perceived Value is not only positively affected by
Usefulness and Ease of Use but also Interactivity and Immersion in a gamified VRTWS, (4)
Immersion was found to be positively affected by Presence, (5) through the positive effect on
Satisfaction, user’s Perceived Value had positive effect on the Intention toward adoption. In
addition to the contribution regarding the research framework, the study also contributes to
proposing a three-level system design philosophy for different technical level as well as the
architecture for the proposed gamified VRTWS. Level I refers to the Tourism Web System
(TWS) that provides conventional information and services for tourism products. Most of the
ordinary tourism websites (e.g., https://en.liontravel.com/, an iconic tourism website in
Taiwan) belong to this category, in which users only can use the browser on their PCs or
mobile devices to check tourism information. Level II refers to the VR-enhanced Tourism
Web System (VRTWS) that provides VR feature (without gameful experience) plus conven-
tional information and services for tourism products. In this level, the VRTWS does not just
typically show the pictures and itinerary information for tourism attractions but also has the
ability to provide an embedded VR function and content in creating a better immersive tour
preview experience. Level III refers to the Gamified VRTWS that further incorporates game
elements and provides gameful experience to the users based on the foundation of VRTWS.
By referring to the proposed three-level system design principle, current travel e-commerce
companies are allowed to re-examine their current positions more clearly, set up their future
direction, and formulate the development strategies (e.g., moving among Level I, II and III)
based on their customer needs and market segmentation. For VR technical service firms, not
only can they integrate downwards with the existing Level I tourism e-commerce companies,
but they can also further incorporate gamification into VRTWS for upward development to
Level III. The proposed gamified VRTWS, the validated research framework, the three-level
system design philosophy and architecture, and the study results with implications can be
Multimedia Tools and Applications (2021) 80:29339–29365 29361

referenced by the researchers and practitioners for managing incorporation of gamification into
designing, developing, and managing their VR-enhanced service in tourism e-commerce.

6.3 Limitations and future research

There are several limitations in interpreting the results of the present study. First, of the 208
usable respondents in this study, 150 (72%) were in the 15–20 years age group, because of the
nature of convenience sampling at the management college of our university. The main
participants fit well with those potential younger generations tourists who plan trips, and
highly accept the delivered marketing information online, show the most interest in using VR
[65]. Two hundred and eight (100%) participants have been the users in searching for tourism
information on the Internet for at least 3 years. In addition, partial least squares is a well-known
method to detect statistically meaningful results [27]. The convergent validity and discriminant
validity of the study was concluded to be supported by Table 3 and Table 4, and the current
sample is unlikely to be a significant threat to the validity of the study. However, the COVID-
19 has different impacts on tourism industry (such as online tourism service providers and the
traditional travel agencies who provide web services) based on their size, location, manage-
ment and ownership style, and heterogeneous tourism demand (e.g. corporate travelers, leisure
and business travelers, group and independent tourists, religious tourists, etc.). Hence, the
future research should consider different samples to investigate different market segments.
Next, in this study, we designed and developed the gamified VRTWS for users to experience
Dali Art Plaza which is an emerging hot sightseeing spot in Taiwan. Since this study does not
consider the impact of the variety of tourism experiences (e.g., visiting museums, amusement
park, shopping, etc.) and gamification mechanisms (e.g., different rules, processes, or goals),
future research can expand the experiment by implementing different destinations of VR
experiences with different gamification mechanisms. Third, each participant was asked to fill
in the research questionnaires immediately after experiencing the gamified VRTWS. There-
fore, we rely on participants’ recall of the VR experience instead of experienced during VR.
Future research can use sensors and psychophysiological analysis to eliminate potential bias
about the objective measurements of presence and enjoyment in gamification. Last, we
designed and developed a tourism e-commerce web system (with embedded VR function
and LazyDoor as the brand name) which is different from conventional online tourism
websites that typically show pictures and itinerary information for tourism attractions. The
aim of this study is to verify gamification and VR enriched the ordinary tourism websites’
marketing in today’s highly competitive and fast-changing e-tourism environment. Future
research can extend to include a control group (without gamification and VR) to compare with
the outcomes of the experimental group (users involved in the gamified VR-based application)
to explain more broadly about consumer behavior in tourism e-commerce.

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