From Play to Purpose: How Gamification and Goal Priming Enhance Virtual Reality Tourism Experiences

In the metaverse era, virtual reality (VR) technology has emerged as a valuable marketing tool for tourism, yet its high development costs and limited sensory engagement hinder widespread adoption. This study explores whether, how, and when gamified VR tourism can strengthen tourists’ connections with destinations. Drawing on achievement goal theory and affordance theory, we examined how gamified goal primes influence tourists’ information processing strategies and perceptions of VR tourism affordances. We employed perceived knowledge and emotional connection to represent the cognitive and affective aspects of VR tourism affordance and developed a model distinguishing between achievement and mastery goals. Through three laboratory experiments, we tested the model and found that achievement goal primes affect VR affordances via surface and deep information processing. Additionally, the type of VR tourism experience moderated these effects. Our findings contribute to VR tourism literature by identifying the role of tourists’ achievement goals and processing strategies, offering insights for designing gamified VR experiences to enhance marketing outcomes.