The Great Filter? A Preliminary Study on Metaverse and Sustainable Food Consumer

Collective virtual spaces are increasing attention from scholars and practitioners due to their potential to lead business growth while reducing environmental impacts. The Metaverse, with its immersive digital presence and virtual economies, serves as a prominent example, particularly in industries such as food. The existing literature on its adoption in the sector is still limited. Therefore, this study employs Mini Focus Groups with Italian Metaverse experts and a binary logistic regression model to identify the key factors influencing the adoption of the Metaverse in the food sector. It focuses on Italy due to its cultural-, economic-, and sector-specific dynamics in the sector, where the Metaverse could play a transformative role. Technological and regulatory uncertainties, as well as security risks, are the main obstacles which, according to experts, should deter consumers from embracing food purchases in the Metaverse. On the other hand, this study highlights several facilitating factors that can encourage adoption, also contributing to the achievement of SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production. These include performance expectancy, effort expectancy, perceived behavior, hedonic motivation, and consumer innovativeness. These factors are likely to drive consumer engagement with Metaverse-based food platforms. The results provide interesting insights into which factors, according to experts, would influence people’s willingness to purchase food products within the Metaverse, in view of the possible development of a new market for food products. This study provides a significant contribution to scholars and practitioners by shedding light on the main factors influencing consumer adoption of the Metaverse.