Psychological Ownership in VR Fashion: Two Studies on The Role of Customization

The fashion industry, in particular fast fashion, is one of the largest contributors to climate degradation (Boström & Micheletti, 2016). Immersive technologies such as Extended Reality (XR), including Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are suggested as solutions (Zhou et al., 2022) to among others promote sustainability awareness of fashion consumers (Spadoni et al., 2024; Won et al., 2024). While there is a plethora of studies researching virtual worlds and VR in online shopping (Xi & Hamari, 2021), there is a scarcity of studies looking specifically at VR fashion. This research sub-stream mostly studied the VR environment and interaction devices [e.g., freehand gestures (Wu et al., 2019)] and compared different degrees of the perceived reality such as physical spaces, digital photos, 360 degrees, and 3D. Overall, studies found that products in VR increased purchase intention (Moes & Van Vliet, 2017) and realism, interactivity, and choice to be important determinants (Donatiello et al., 2018). Also, experiential benefits (Kapusy & Logo, 2017) such as enjoyment (Moes & Van Vliet, 2017) are important mediators.
However, there is a paucity of research that studies interactivity with fashion products in XR and VR. There is consumer reluctance to engage in VR (Mesjar et al., 2023) and a lack of understanding of consumer ownership in this unique environment that is characterised by non-consequential, disentangled, and polyidentity user experiences (Xi & Hamari, 2021). Therefore, Xi and Hamari (2021) call for more research studying this interactivity.
We suggest studying the consumer engagement with XR fashion through psychological ownership theory (Pierce et al., 2003, 2004). Studies have shown that being able to have control over an object’s use induced feelings of psychological ownership (Morewedge, 2021). It relates to being able to customize the object. For example, Watkins and Molesworth (2012) found that gamers created feelings of possession as they customized virtual goods. Therefore, the research question we study in this project is: ‘how does customization influence consumers’ psychological ownership in VR fashion?’ We conducted two studies. In study 1, we surveyed 94 respondents. Study 2 randomized controlled trial