Entrepreneurship in the metaverse: Increasing entrepreneurial intentions through virtual world entrepreneurship self-efficacy and involvement

The metaverse is predicted to become a trillion-dollar industry by the end of this decade. Recognizing its immense economic potential, we conducted a comprehensive, longitudinal study within a 3D virtual world to gain deeper insights into how entrepreneurial intentions develop in the metaverse. To guide our investigation, we proposed a research model developed from a conceptual integration of Social Cognitive Theory, Efficacy Theory, and Involvement Theory propositions to examine how real-world entrepreneurship training affects virtual world entrepreneurial self-efficacy and how virtual world entrepreneurial self-efficacy, in turn, influences virtual world entrepreneurial intentions, both directly and indirectly through involvement. Our results contribute to theory and practice by revealing that real-world entrepreneurship training predicted virtual-world entrepreneurship self-efficacy before users gained experience with the platform. Results also showed that early-stage virtual world entrepreneurship self-efficacy only indirectly predicted virtual world entrepreneurial intentions through involvement. In contrast, later-stage virtual world entrepreneurship self-efficacy predicted virtual world entrepreneurial intentions both directly, and indirectly through involvement. Virtual worlds are a central component of the metaverse infrastructure; thus, this research provides significant theoretical and practical contributions to the literature on entrepreneurship in these environments.