The sweet escape to metaverse: Exploring escapism, anxiety, and virtual place attachment

The metaverse is an emerging area of research and has a lot of potential in providing individuals with an alternate place of inhabitation. The importance of metaverse escapism although has been discussed in current literatures, but what can be its drivers and consequences is unclear. From a theoretical perspective, escapism can be modelled in two way: cause-based (positivist) and effect-based (negativist). In this work we propose a positivist approach by theorizing how different types of real-life problems (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) will drive metaverse escapism, fostering attachment with this virtual place. We collect 585 responses from users of VR-based metaverse applications like Horizon World, VR Chat, etc. The results are analysed using Partial Least Squares based Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique. We found that only autonomy and competence problems lead to metaverse escapism, and further to virtual place attachment. Metaverse escapism acts like a full mediator in the link between real-world problems and virtual place attachment. Likewise, anxiety positively moderates the relationship between competence problem and escapism, but negatively moderates the relationship between autonomy problem and escapism. Our work contributes to the metaverse literatures by identifying those who are likely to engage in metaverse escapism. Our model explains 60.4% of the variance in virtual place attachment, indicating the practical significance of identifying the correct targets and fostering their attachment with this virtual world.