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Attachment to real-world places and willingness to migrate to metaverse virtual worlds

By November 16, 2023Metaverse
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Abstract

People are increasingly spending time in virtual places. In the future, the opportunities offered by digital worlds may provide an additional incentive for virtual migration, which may be much easier and similarly gratifying compared to physical migration. The metaverse is a new virtual world where individuals can explore, express themselves, and interact with others in ways that may not be possible in the physical world. In three studies (NStudy 1a = 1056; NStudy1b = 670; NStudy2 = 1250), we examined whether emotional bonds with real places predict intention to migrate to the metaverse. The results show that two different factors predict willingness to migrate to the metaverse: 1) traditional attachment to real places, i.e. unwillingness to leave one's physical place of residence and 2) a lack of attachment to any real-world place. Active attachment was negatively related to willingness to migrate to the metaverse. However, in two studies, this relation was non-significant when other types of people–place relations were included in the models. We also investigated how place attachment types are associated with real-world and virtual migration intentions. Our study contributes to the literature on the relationship between attachment to real-world places and willingness to use virtual worlds.

Introduction

Place attachment is often treated as a factor that deters deterring mobility intentions deterring mobility intentions. This perspective stems from the phenomenological tradition of viewing place attachment as inherently related to people's rootedness in a place and as based primarily on their length of residence and the deep social relationships they establish and maintain there (Casey, 1997; Relph, 1976; Tuan, 1974, 1977). However, the apparent contradiction between mobility and place attachment is increasingly being questioned (Gustafson, 2014; Lynnebakke & Aasland, 2022; Trąbka, 2019).

Research has shown that more mobile people are not necessarily less attached to places than more sedentary ones (Lynnebakke & Aasland, 2022) and that the relationship between place attachment and mobility may change when the scale of a site (i.e., region, city, and neighborhood) is taken into account (Gustafson, 2014, pp. 37–48; Trąbka, 2019). Additionally, people can simultaneously become attached to many locations (Lewicka, 2011b) and even develop attachments to places they have never visited (Bolderman & Reijnders, 2021; Hosany et al., 2020), which may motivate them to relocate (Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2004). Moreover, place attachment is not a homogeneous construct, and its types vary in quality and content, translating into different patterns of mobility (Lewicka, 2011b; Raymond et al., 2017). For example, some types of place attachment may be related to higher sedentariness, whereas others may be neutral or positively related to higher mobility (Di Masso et al., 2019). Therefore, the existence of multiple qualitatively different types of place attachment may mean that the relationship between place attachment and mobility is less straightforward than initially thought.

The increasing popularity of virtual worlds allow a new context for the previously mentioned studies: mobility that does not require physically leaving a place of residence (Coulson et al., 2020; Oleksy et al., 2023; Urry, 2002). Virtual migration has significantly altered resource allocation (e.g., time and emotional engagement) in favor of virtual locations (Coulson et al., 2020), which raises concerns about the diminishing role of real-world places in our daily lives (Devine-Wright et al., 2020; Gifford, 2014; Paul et al., 2022). Compared with traditional migration, virtual migration allows individuals to remain in their real-world residences. Thus, even people with a sedentary attachment style can enjoy some of the benefits of mobility without making radical changes in their lives. Moreover, in the future, opportunities offered by such virtual migration are likely to increase because major technology companies and even cities have begun to develop their versions of the metaverse—a digital universe composed of multiple elements of technology, including virtual reality and augmented reality, where users are expected to live their lives and work online.

Despite the increased role of digital worlds in people's lives (Barreda-Ángeles & Hartmann, 2022; Paul et al., 2022), research on how bonds with real-world places modify our attitudes toward virtual mobility is scarce. This paper examines how attachment to real-world places relates to willingness to migrate to a new type of virtual world (i.e., the metaverse). Based on Hummon's (1992) and Lewicka's (2011a) typologies, we investigate the relationship between two qualitatively different types of place attachment—traditional place attachment and active place attachment—and place relativity. We also explore the relationship between place attachment and willingness to migrate to real-world locations.

Section snippets

Place attachment and migration intentions

One of the most popular theoretical models to explain mobility is the push–pull–mooring (PPM) framework, which is employed in the context of both real migration (Moon, 1995) and virtual migration—e.g., players switching intentions from one digital world to another (Chang et al., 2014; Coulson et al., 2020; Hou et al., 2011). The PPM framework refers to people's decisions to move from one area to another as influenced by various push, pull, and mooring factors. Push factors comprise the negative

The relationship between virtual mobility and place attachment

There is a debate as to whether virtual locations should be defined as places at all, since they lack physicality (Lewicka, 2011b; Rzeszewski & Evans, 2020). However, there is growing evidence that virtual spaces can be analyzed in the same terms as real places because, much like physical places, they can evoke feelings of place identity, place dependence, and social bonding (Stokols et al., 2009). Like real-world places, virtual places can have their own boundaries, history, and authenticity (

Metaverse virtual worlds as destinations for future migrations

The metaverse is considered the evolution of the internet, where it will be possible to not only immerse oneself in 3D virtual reality and perform everyday tasks in environments such as work or school but also spend leisure time shopping, socializing, working out, or gaming (Bojic, 2022; Oh et al., 2023). The idea of the metaverse dates to the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which depicts the metaverse as a parallel virtual universe. Today, due to technological

Beyond place attachment: The role of covariates in explaining willingness to migrate to the metaverse

We employed a diverse set of control variables to robustly test the effects of place attachment on the desire to migrate to virtual worlds. We accounted for demographic variables such as age, gender, education, socioeconomic status, and relationship status—all of which are widely acknowledged in the literature to significantly influence both real-world migration (Haug, 2008; Hoang, 2011; Quinn & Rubb, 2005) and technology use (Hsu et al., 2015; McAndrew & Jeong, 2012; Wang & Cheng, 2021).

Research hypotheses

Based on the aforementioned research, we expected traditional place attachment to be negatively related to real-world migration but positively related to willingness to migrate to the metaverse because the latter enables virtual migration while staying in the place to which one is attached. We expected active place attachment to be positively associated with willingness to migrate to real-world locations but that the link between active attachment and virtual migration is theoretically less

Participants and procedure

Study 1a was conducted on a nationwide sample (N = 1056) via an online research panel using computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI). The sample size was sufficient for detecting a small-to-medium (0.2–0.5) effect size, assuming a power of 90% and a probability level of α = 0.05. We used Soper's (2017) approach, appropriate for SEM analysis, to calculate the required sample size. Compatibility with the composition of the Polish population was ensured by a random quota sample in alignment with

Participants and procedure

All participants were residents of Warsaw, Poland's largest city and capital. To provide compatibility with the composition of the Warsaw population, a random quota sample was obtained in alignment with the demographic composition of the Warsaw population with respect to gender and age. The initial sample consisted of 742 participants who completed a survey via an online research panel. We excluded 72 individuals who did not provide a correct response to the attention check question. The final

Participants and procedure

Study 2 was part of a broader research project conducted using a nationwide sample (N = 1302) via an internet panel. To ensure compatibility with the composition of the Polish population, a random quota sample in alignment with the demographic composition of the 18–60-year-old Polish population with respect to gender, age, and size of residence was invited to participate. We excluded 52 individuals who did not provide a correct response to the attention check question. The final sample

General discussion

Place attachment is often considered a factor that anchors people in their favorite location. However, in today's world of constant movement of people, ideas, images, and objects (Massey, 2008), place attachment is increasingly a relationship that is not limited to one location and that seldom precludes mobility and migration (Lewicka, 2011b, Lewicka, 2013). In other words, it is possible to be attached to many places and migrate between them (Kim, 2021). In addition, nowadays, migration does

Limitations and future directions

One of the limitations of this research was its correlational nature. However, studies that manipulate place attachment are still rare (see, e.g., Scannell & Gifford, 2017), and to the best of our knowledge, the types of attachment that we investigated have never been experimentally manipulated. Future research should aim to develop and test manipulations of traditional and active types of place attachment (as well as place relativity), taking into account the subtle nature of the relationships

Conclusion

In the future, the opportunities offered by digital worlds may provide an additional incentive for virtual migration, which may be simpler and similarly gratifying compared to physical migration. To our knowledge, our study is the first to show how different types of place attachment may predict willingness to migrate to the metaverse—a new kind of virtual place designed to combine living in a digital space with unique activities that are not constrained by the laws of the real world. Based on

Author credit statement

Tomasz Oleksy: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review & Editing.

Anna Wnuk: Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review & Editing.

Izabela Lassota: Conceptualization, Writing - Original Draft.

Acknowledgements

Study 1 was funded by Uniwersytet Warszawski No BOB-IDUB-622-133/2022.

Study 2 was funded by the Polish National Science Centre No 2018/30/E/HS6/00379.

Study 3 was funded by the Polish National Science Centre No 2021/43/B/HS6/03357.

References (76)

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