Would You Accept Virtual Tourism? The Impact of COVID-19 Risk Perception on Technology Acceptance from a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism industry and its stakeholders have tried to develop a new virtual tourism market, but its effectiveness remains to be tested. We proposed and tested a new measurement scale composed of ease of use, usefulness, autonomy, enjoyment, perceived risk of COVID-19, and attitude. In total, 274 questionnaires were collected by the purposive sampling method and 239 of them were valid, with 57 potential virtual tourists (who knew of but had not used VR in tourism) and 182 actual virtual tourists (who had experienced virtual tourism). Then, we used path analysis to test the hypothetical model and compared the results of two groups. The results show that (1) the popularity of virtual tourism is limited, (2) ease of use significantly affects usefulness and enjoyment for the two groups, (3) usefulness significantly affects autonomy and enjoyment for the two groups, (4) perceived risk of COVID-19 has a direct impact on the attitude towards virtual tourism for the two groups rather than a moderating role, and (5) expected ease of use has a significant effect on autonomy, and autonomy further influences enjoyment for potential tourists. This paper is an explorative attempt to explore virtual technology applied in tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results provide theoretical contributions and practical implications for technology improvement, tourism marketing, and virtual tourism development.