Chapter 5: Do Healthcare Sector Intend to Use Metaverse? A Behavioral Intention Analysis

This research analyzes the factors that determine the intention of the healthcare sector to adopt the metaverse. For that, an effort has been made to analyze the effort expectancy and performance expectancy constructs to know the intention of the healthcare sector to adopt the metaverse for their business performance. For this study, a sample size of 527 from the healthcare sectors was considered, and to get the high predictive capacity, the analysis is performed on the primary data collected from healthcare sectors by applying Principal Component Analysis. The proposed research found that effort expectancy resulted in two types of respondent groups: one found the metaverse easy and useful, while the other group found it complex. Performance expectancy provided four types of respondent groups, and they found that usage of this immersive technology has resulted in increased performance and effectiveness along with better quality and recognition. This study is one of the first of its kind to research the purpose and application of the metaverse in the healthcare sector for the pursuit of growth strategies. Existing studies reviewed so far have analyzed this immersive system from the perspective of close-to-consumer behavior and with sectors like Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and others only. This contemporary study contributes to the repository of the knowledge bank about the application of the metaverse in the healthcare sector.