What do university students think about the metaverse?

Abstract

Metaverse is a new concept which is frequently discussed in many fields such as health, art, sports, entertainment, education, trade, and marketing. The scope and actuality of this concept, which expresses a new digital world beyond the universe, necessitated this study. In this study; gender, age, duration of social media usage and levels of metaverse knowledge, awareness and attitude of university students have been tried to be analyzed statistically in terms of variables such as playing digital games, using e-commerce, communicating with other individuals in virtual channels and the availability of crypto money. The survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was preferred in the study. Independent Sample T Test and Pearson Correlation tests were used to analyze data with a normal distribution. The universe of the research includes students studying at Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University in the 2021-2022 academic year, and the sample of the research includes 271 students (122 females and 149 males), studying in different departments of the same university. Apart from the personal information form, the 'Metaverse Scale’ developed by Süleymanoğulları et al. was chosen as a data collection tool. According to the results, male participants' metaverse knowledge, attitude, and awareness levels are higher than females in the sub-dimensions of digitalization and lifestyle. While a positive and weak relationship was found between the participants’ average daily social media usage time and the technology sub-dimension average score, the analysis results indicate that the levels of the participants who engage in e-commerce in the technology, digitalization, and lifestyle sub-dimensions are higher than the others. Finally, it has been found that the metaverse knowledge, attitude and awareness levels of the students with crypto money in the sub-dimensions of technology, digitalization and lifestyle are higher than those in the other group. According to the results of this study, it can be said that the metaverse attitudes, awareness and knowledge levels of the university students who constitute the research sample group differ depending on sociocultural and socioeconomic factors.