Harassment and personal space invasions have been a core privacy threat in social virtual worlds from the outset, often causing lasting harm to victims and reducing their willingness to engage with these technologies. Media coverage of such incidents further amplifies fear and discourages potential users. In response, platforms have increasingly emphasized proximity-control features that allow users to protect themselves both preventively and reactively – most prominently through safety bubbles and avatar blocking. However, no study to date has examined whether these features influence adoption-relevant factors. To address this gap, we conducted a video vignette-based online survey with 195 participants in Germany, each exposed to a mild personal space invasion scenario under one of three conditions: no safety features, safety bubble, or avatar blocking. Results show that both safety bubbles and avatar blocking positively influence relevant adoption factors such as trust, controllability, satisfaction, and use intention. Safety bubbles additionally improved perceived safety and reliability, appearing to be the more effective solution due to their preventive nature. Finally, implications of the findings are discussed.

Following the Quantified Self (QS) movement, sports apps increasingly adopt self-tracking technologies that offer data-driven insights into personal competencies to enhance self-efficacy. However, sustained engagement with QS technology remains challenging, as interpreting data is complex. One potential solution is to make QS data more meaningful to users. To address this, we present a player card feature within a QS sports app, incorporating a personalized avatar to enhance users’ enjoyment, data meaningfulness, and self-efficacy to promote continued use. We evaluate the app through a field experiment in a soccer context to examine the impact of the avatar feature. Results indicate that avatar identification positively affects self-efficacy, data meaningfulness, continued use intention, and enjoyment, though enjoyment did not impact continued use. Our findings suggest that (1) avatar identification can be enhanced through personalization, (2) personalized avatars effectively boost self-efficacy, and (3) sustained engagement may rely more on meaning than on enjoyment alone.

Depending on their formality, clothes do not only change one’s appearance, but can also influence behavior and cognitive processes. Shoes are a special aspect of an outfit. Besides coming in various degrees of formality, their structure can affect human gait. Avatars used to embody users in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) can wear any kind of clothing. According to the Proteus Effect, the appearance of a user’s avatar can influence their behavior. Users change their behavior in accordance to the expected behavior of the avatar. In our study, we embody 39 participants with a generic avatar of the user’s gender wearing three different pairs of shoes as within condition. The shoes differ in degree of formality. We measure the gait during a 2-minute walking task during which participants wore the same real shoe and assess selective attention using the Stroop task. Our results show significant differences in gait between the tested virtual shoe pairs. We found small effects between the three shoe conditions with respect to selective attention. However, we found no significant differences with respect to correct items and response time in the Stroop task. Thus, our results indicate that virtual shoes are accepted by users and, although not eliciting any physical constraints, lead to changes in gait. This suggests that users not only adjust personal behavior according to the Proteus Effect, but also are affected by virtual biomechanical constraints. Also, our results suggest a potential influence of virtual clothing on cognitive performance.