Chaeyun Lim

Extended reality (XR) technologies promise new ways of working, learning, and socializing in immersive environments. Yet this future raises critical questions about who will benefit and who may be left behind. This chapter examines the assumption that expanding access to XR is inherently beneficial, using the digital divide as a framework to interrogate this belief. Although immersive technologies offer transformative potential across education, healthcare, and the workplace, their positive impact depends on more than access alone. To address this gap, the chapter introduces the concept of “immersive readiness” – a multidimensional construct encompassing motivational, skill-based, and contextual capacities required for meaningful and beneficial XR use. This chapter argues that insufficient attention to immersive readiness risks deepening existing social inequalities, producing what we term “immersive inequality” – defined as the unequal distribution of immersive readiness necessary to benefit from XR. The chapter outlines a central tension between accelerating XR adoption and ensuring that such adoption is safe, effective, and empowering. Through this lens, it chapter highlights the societal risks of deploying XR without adequate preparation and considers implications for key sectors. By reframing inclusion around immersive readiness, the chapter proposes a pathway toward an equitable XR future that democratizes experiences rather than widening digital divides.

To extend our understanding of CASA and account for changes in technological complexity and configuration, this research asks: Do increasing levels of social cues in a media representative that is separate from the core technology it represents lead to increased perceived anthropomorphism of the core technology? And does such perceived anthropomorphism predict positive treatment of the core technology? We conducted two complementary studies observing e-scooter use and treatment, an online experiment focused on responses to video stimuli and a field experiment focused on actual user behavior. Findings suggest that, indeed, social cues in a media representative (i.e., an e-scooter rental mobile application) of a separate core technology (i.e., the e-scooter itself ) leads to positive attitudes about the core technology, potentially because of increased perceived anthropomorphism.

Impression management is a crucial tactic within the workplace milieu. This study establishes a connection between impression management and the negative self-evaluation stemming from heightened self-monitoring during virtual meetings (VM), which manifests in the form of Zoom (VM) fatigue. We conducted a cross-sectional survey, by recruiting 2,448 U.S.-based workers. Our survey results revealed that facial appearance dissatisfaction is associated with VM fatigue, resulting in lower intention to adopt VM technologies due to decreased perceived usefulness of VM technologies. Furthermore, building upon the Uses and Gratification (UG) perspective and the assumptions of the Social Information Processing (SIP) theory and the Hyperpersonal Model, our findings illuminate that VM fatigue prompts the use of impression management behaviors by using VM features closely linked to dissatisfaction with one’s facial appearance. The results suggest that utilization of impression management features in VMs is driven by needs related to facial appearance concerns, which is associated with impression management. This study extends the concept of impression management to VM environments in the workplace, underscoring the importance of addressing workers’ needs and well-being to foster worker-friendly VM communication environments and promote VM acceptance. This study identifies external factors within the Technology Acceptance Model by integrating the UG perspective, the SIP theory, and the Hyperpersonal Model to understand the mechanisms underlying VM fatigue and adoption in the emerging virtual workplace.

The metaverse—a network of three‐dimensional virtual worlds in which people can engage in everyday activities—could augment future workplaces given the widespread acceptance of remote work. While it is not fully conceptualized, many have experienced, observed, or learned about metaverse‐related technologies (e.g., online gaming and virtual reality), which will likely influence their openness to using the metaverse for professional purposes. In order to understand what the future of such remote work may look like, our exploratory research proposes that openness to the metaverse workplace (OMW) predicts the eventual adoption of this impending technology. We conducted a survey‐based study ( N = 604) to examine how OMW and (in contrast) openness to metaverse entertainment (OME) relate to differences in gender, videoconferencing fatigue, and metaverse information seeking. We found that OMW was positively related to OME. However, OMW ratings were lower than OME, and gender differences in OMW and OME were mediated by videoconferencing fatigue and metaverse information seeking. These findings extend the literature on mediated communication in professional contexts and suggest that the metaverse workplace will suffer from gender inequity, at least in the near‐term future.

Virtual meetings, facilitated through videoconferencing or virtual reality, have become a common form of workplace communication. Despite the advantages these meetings offer, enabling collaboration among workers in dispersed locations, the phenomenon of virtual meeting fatigue, commonly referred to as Zoom fatigue, has emerged as a significant concern. This study explores whether facial appearance dissatisfaction, a known contributor to Zoom fatigue, leads to reduced engagement in virtual meeting interactions by mediating the role of Zoom fatigue. Furthermore, this study examines the impact of facial dissatisfaction and Zoom fatigue on virtual meeting engagement cross-culturally, within the contexts of South Korea and the United States. The findings indicate that in the United States, facial dissatisfaction led to a lower level of virtual meeting engagement through the mediating role of Zoom fatigue, while in South Korea, facial dissatisfaction negatively impacted virtual meeting engagement regardless of Zoom fatigue levels. Additionally, we reveal that Zoom fatigue and facial dissatisfaction are more pronounced among U.S. women than U.S. men, but differences were not observed between South Korean women and men. These results underscore the influence of societal competitiveness, as seen in South Korea, on impression management concerns in technology-mediated work environments. We highlight the importance of developing virtual meeting features to mitigate facial dissatisfaction and Zoom fatigue, thereby enhancing engagement in virtual interactions.