Enhancing Metaverse Meetings Potential: The Interplay of Avatar and Virtual Environment Features on Social Loafing Tendencies

Organizations are continuously seeking innovative ways to connect global talents for digital collaborations. Workplace face-to-face meetings have been largely replaced by virtual means, evolving from teleconferencing to metaverse meetings. However, virtual meeting outcomes are unpromising, employees tend to withdraw effort when working in virtual teams and engage in social loafing. Metaverse meetings have been seen as a potential solution to social loafing, due to the decreased distance through avatar interactions and immersive virtual environments. However, little is known about how these metaverse features combine to affect social loafing. Combining process virtualization and media naturalness theories, we propose the interplay between avatar and virtual environment features and the underlying mechanisms. Online scenario-based experiments will be conducted to test our research model. This paper will provide a comprehensive understanding of social loafing and offer design and usage guidance on how to match the process and IT features for effective metaverse meetings.