Why Do People Use VR (Games)?: A Study of Continued Use and Spending

This study examines why frequent virtual reality users continue to use VR and spend money on it, drawing on Uses and Gratifications Theory and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. Surveying 681 to 682 frequent VR users, predominantly male (73.3%), largely college-educated, and with a mean age of about 33, the authors apply structural equation modeling to test how utility, effort, social influence, facilitating conditions, enjoyment, price-value, and gratifications such as playfulness, embodiment, presence, social interaction, and visual aesthetics relate to continued use and spending intentions. Single- and multiplayer games constitute the most frequently consumed content, and roughly a quarter of respondents reported no VR spending at all.

The models explain 73.0% of the variance in continued use and 60.4% in spending intentions. Utility, facilitating conditions, enjoyment, price-value, and embodiment emerge as significant positive predictors of both outcomes. Effort, social influence, playfulness, presence, and social interaction do not reach significance. The most unexpected finding is a significant negative association between visual aesthetics and continued use, which the authors attribute to habituation to high-fidelity graphics or a possible uncanny-valley effect.

The authors conclude that perceived enjoyment is the strongest predictor of sustained VR engagement and spending, implying that even utilitarian VR applications benefit from being enjoyable and that lighter, lower-cost hardware and content may suit broader adoption. The study's scope is limited by its failure to control for specific content types, hardware, and demographic variables, and the authors call for interviews and experiments to clarify the role of aesthetics and gratifications.