Usability

Neuroscience

Statistics

Social psychology

Computer science

Structural equation modeling

Virtual reality

Empirical research

Database

Psychology

Mathematics

Metaverse

Data science

Artificial intelligence

Conceptual model

Novelty

Knowledge management

Perception

Technology acceptance model

Human–computer interaction

Machine learning

Computers and Education Artificial Intelligence

The metaverse is a kind of imagined world with immersive digital spaces that increase, allowing a more interactive environment in educational settings. The metaverse is an expansion of the synchronous communication that embraces an effective number of users to share different experiences. The study aims to investigate the students' perceptions towards metaverse system for educational purposes in the Gulf area. The conceptual model comprises the adoption properties, namely trialability, observability, compatibility, and complexity, users' satisfaction, personal innovativeness, and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) constructs. The novelty of the paper lies in its conceptual model that correlates both personal-based characteristics and technology-based features. In addition, the novel approach of hybrid analysis will be used in the current study to perform deep-learning-based analysis of structural equation modelling (SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN). Moreover, the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) is used in the current study to evaluate the involved factors for their importance and performance. The study identified Perceived Usefulness (PU) to be an essential predictor of the factor of Users’ Intention to Use the Metaverse System (MS). The fact was discovered during ANN and IPMA analysis. Furthermore, this study is practically significant, as it helped the concerned authorities in educational sector in understanding the significance of each factor and allowed them to make efforts and plans according to the order of significance of factors. Another important implication of the study is methodological in nature. It validates that deep ANN architecture can offer deep insight into non-linear relationships shared by various factors of a theoretical model.

A conceptual framework for determining metaverse adoption in higher institutions of gulf area: An empirical study using hybrid SEM-ANN approach