Immersion for All? Rethinking Equity and Fatigue in the XR Era: A Systematic Literature Review of Immersive Technology

Immersive technologies, including virtual, augmented, mixed, and extended reality (XR), are transforming how people learn, heal, travel, and consume. This literature review analyzed 95 peer-reviewed articles published between 2017 and 2025 across six domains: education, healthcare, tourism and cultural heritage, business and marketing, the metaverse, and others (e.g., review papers). The findings revealed that immersive applications could significantly enhance engagement, empathy, and learning effectiveness; however, they frequently induce cognitive overload, privacy risks, and unequal access. In education and healthcare, immersive technologies offer substantial benefits for training and rehabilitation butremain challenged by fatigue, ethical safeguards, and technological dependence. Tourism and cultural heritage research has highlighted that immersive storytelling fosters empathy and preservation, but long-term inclusivity and sustainability are limited. In business and marketing, XR-enabled experiences strengthened trust and consumer–brand relationships, but increased user exhaustion and exclusion. Furthermore, metaverse research has underscored the importance of social presence, identity formation, and collaboration, while revealing persistent governance and accessibility gaps. Synthesizing across these domains, the review identifies four crosscutting challenges: (1) emotional polarization, (2) cognitive and ethical fatigue, (3) design-context misalignment, and (4) socioeconomic inequities. From a sociotechnical perspective, these tensions illustrate how immersive technologies empower and exhaust users. This study advances theoretical understanding by integrating the affective and structural dimensions of XR adoption, and offers practical guidance for designing emotionally sustainable, contextually grounded, and socially responsible immersive environments.