The adoption of virtual reality devices: The technology acceptance model integrating enjoyment, social interaction, and strength of the social ties

•Perceived enjoyment of VR is a core factor that both directly and indirectly influences the intention to use VR.•Social interactions and strength of the social ties are significant factors that increase the perceived enjoyment of VR.•People recognize that using VR is not difficult.•Users generally adopt VR for enjoyment rather than usefulness. Recently, the development of virtual reality technology in the entertainment industry has applied social network capability. This study empirically analyzes how the introduction of social network characteristics as a diffusion strategy for virtual reality devices affects consumers’ intention to use. This survey was conducted with 350 people from South Korea, and TAM was used to analyze the acceptability of virtual reality. User adoption behaviors were analyzed rigorously, adding perceived enjoyment, social interactions, and strength of the social ties to the basic TAM. The results of this study indicate that social interactions and strength of the social ties increase perceived enjoyment, and perceived enjoyment has a more significant effect on intention to use than perceived usefulness, which is the main element of TAM. These results have theoretical implications for consumer adoption behavior and empirical implications for the best marketing strategies for virtual reality devices.