A Study on Metaverse Awareness, Cyber Risks, and Steps for Increased Adoption

Metaverse, also known as the successor of mobile internet, has become immensely popular given the increased focus of technology companies on Web 3.0 and virtual reality. Though its popularity has grown at least within the tech industry, there has not been a survey conducted to measure the awareness and perception of metaverse among regular technology users. Further, there have been studies conducted to apply the technology acceptance model to metaverse users. However, such studies have not been conducted from a cybersecurity risk perspective. This study fills this gap by understanding the awareness, perception, and concerns about metaverse adoption. Further, based on the technology acceptance model, the authors propose techniques that could improve perception and reduce concerns about this technology, enabling faster acceptance and use. that is expected to reach 250 trillion and 5G connections which is expected to be on average 100 times faster than 4G. Results suggest that the intention to use VR is positively influenced by perceived usefulness and negatively influenced by cybersickness. Hedonic quality- stimulation and personal innovativeness are predictors of perceived usefulness. Study on the intentions of early users of metaverse platforms using the Technology Acceptance Model.


INTRodUCTIoN
Metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds that is powered by augmented and virtual reality. Virtual reality (VR) refers to the simulation of an interactive three-dimensional environment that users can be immersed in and can interact with. Muhanna, M. A. (2015). The third generation would include a more immersive and connected experience by leveraging data analytics, machine learning, and decentralization. Metaverse combines both physical and virtual worlds and creates a full-fledged digital economy that would carry out financial transactions and would also enable interoperability that allows the ability to shift across metaverses.
The Metaverse market is expected to have a CAGR of 41.7% from 2021 to 2030 Acumen Research and Consulting. (2022, May 26). The market growth for AR/VR as well as connected devices is planned to grow at a CAGR % rate of over 40% Allied Market Research. (2021, November 1). Other supporting technologies such as cryptocurrency that is expected to reach 250 trillion and 5G connections which is expected to be on average 100 times faster than 4G.
The Metaverse has multiple applications in varied fields including social media, education (Jeon, J., & Jung, S. K., 2021)., and smart cities (Wang, F. Y., Qin, R., Wang, X., & Hu, B. (2022) and modern forms of entertainment to name a few. While research is ongoing clearly describing the varied applications of Metaverse platform, these applications of Metaverse can be successfully used only when there is increased adoption of Metaverse among the general users. There has been no study trying to understand the awareness of metaverse among regular users, the main risks and concerns from an end user perspective and the steps that could be taken to address these concerns which would enable the increased adoption.

LITeRATURe ReVIew
Studies on metaverse have described the applications of this technology in various fields including social media, education (Jeon, J., & Jung, S. K., 2021)., marketing (Shen, B., et. al, 2021), e-commerce (Jeong, H., Yi, Y., & Kim, D. (2022), and it can make users feel sick. For this reason, we believe that these two characteristics of user experience with VR, namely presence and cybersickness, must be included in user acceptance models of VR, besides more traditional variables of user experience.) and smart cities (Wang, F. Y., Qin, R., Wang, X., & Hu, B. (2022). Further, the various cybersecurity risks of metaverse have also been discussed (Ronald L, 2006) (L- H Lee et. al.,2021). User experience with immersive technologies has specific outcomes that make it distinct from traditional technologies (Mütterlein & Hess, 2017): it enables a feeling of presence. While the applications of Metaverse and the various cybersecurity and privacy risks associated with the platform has also been reviewed Wang, Y., Su, Z., Zhang, N., Liu, D., Xing, R., Luan, T. H., & Shen, X. (2022), the perception and awareness of users on metaverse as well as the impact of mitigation of cybersecurity risks to technology adoption has yet to be studied. Davis (1989) proposed the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), in which the intention to use a given technology is predicted by two user perceptions: its perceived usefulness and its perceived Research on the concept, development and standard system for metaverse ease of use. Perceived usefulness is defined as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance" (Davis, 1989, p. 320). Perceived ease of use refers to "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort" (Davis, 1989, p. 320).

Hypothesis
The study by Park, S., & Kang, Y. J. (2021) further extends the technology acceptance model to the metaverse to note that perceived pleasure, interactivity, self-efficacy, and social influence had a positive effect on perceived ease of use which in turn positively affects the intention to use and leads to technology adoption.
Technology security and privacy concerns affect technology trust which in turn positively impacts the behavioral intention to use. Meyer-Waarden, L., & Cloarec, J. (2022). In this experiment, it was best to measure the direct impact that mitigation of cyber risk on technology adoption since this has not been studied in the context of the metaverse. Hence, to address this gap in research, we hypothesize that: Ho: Mitigation of Cybersecurity risks including data privacy would positively impact the Technology adoption of metaverse by the users.
This study was an attempt to understand the perceived risks of metaverse from an end-user perspective and it included a survey conducted over 2 weeks in December 2021 surveys were sent out to over 500 participant respondents of which 124 survey responses were received. The survey was conducted over Google forms and shared with professionals on the mturk platform. To ensure the quality of responses, responses were requested only from mturk masters (users with history of good survey responses and acceptance). Apart from questions to obtain details on the surveyor such as work field, gender, age, and highest educational qualification, they were asked to watch the 11-minute YouTube video from CNET that summarizes" Everything Facebook revealed about the Metaverse" (CNETTV,2021

ReSULTS ANd dISCUSSIoN
The demographics included almost equal number of men and women in the age group of 18-40 years (52,51) and men and women over 40 years were 10% and 5% respectively (14.6). Most of the survey responders worked in IT field (61%), others worked in management (22%) and healthcare (13%).

Figure 2. Null hypothesis
Three of the respondents had a PhD, over a third had master's degree and over half had a bachelor's degree, others had passed secondary school or some college.
Over 75% were successful in correctly defining the Metaverse. 41.9% of the respondents considered metaverse as the future of Internet (21 M, 16 F), a quarter (25.8%,17M,16F) of them considered it was too early to predict metaverse success while about a third (29.8%,21M,16F) considered it a short-lived fad. 85% of those who considered metaverse as a short-lived fad were below 40 years, only 3 respondents over 40 years considered metaverse as a short-term fad. . Among the applications of metaverse, most respondents (61%, 34F,40M, ~80% below 40 years) were excited about virtual gaming, 49.6% (34F,26M, ~90% below 40 years) were excited about applications in Medicine, while about half of the respondents (46.3%,26F,30M) were excited about other applications in real life.
73.8% (43F,44M) of respondents were concerned about data privacy. 56.6% (31F,36M) of users were concerned about other cyber risks and diminishing social skills among the users was a concern mentioned as well (Figure-5). ~75% of the users were ready to invest in metaverse property if they could, while 25% said they would not ( Figure 6).
Based on the analysis, it is noted that mitigation of cyber risks has a positive impact on the behavioral intention to use thereby proving our Null hypothesis that communication of ways of mitigation of cyber risks drives further acceptance of technology in the case of Metaverse.

CoNCLUSIoN
It is clear from our study that the end-user sentiment is generally positive with over three-quarters of the users ready to invest in Metaverse property. Building successful metaverse platforms still have considerable hurdles as described in this paper including building better hardware for realistic presence, and cross-platform API connectivity for better integration to name a few. The study by Park, S., & Kang, Y. J. (2021) extends the technology acceptance model to the metaverse to note that perceived pleasure, interactivity, self-efficacy, and social influence had a positive effect on perceived ease of use. Our study was able to prove that mitigation of concerns including cybersecurity and privacy Table 4. Cyber risks positively impact the behavioral intention to use

Hypothesis path Correlation value Result
Ho, Cyber Risks → Behavioral intention to use 0.534545 Statistically significant  positively affects the technology adoption of Metaverse. Some of the ways to help the end-users overcome these concerns about cybersecurity would be promotions regarding the cyber preparedness as well as driving adoption via social influence.

CoNFLICT oF INTeReST
The author certifies that he has no other potential conflicts of interest. The research involved human participants. The survey shared with the participants explained the purpose of the research, the data collected. Participants took part voluntarily and were given the option to skip the survey at any stage. Further, informed consent was obtained from all subjects and/or their legal guardian(s).

FUNdING AGeNCy
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or notfor-profit sectors.