Privacy-bounded trust pathways in immersive platform innovation: evidence from young urban professionals in China

Immersive platform innovation creates new commercialization opportunities, but it remains unclear how socially legible design cues support users’ participation intentions when privacy concern limits the value of trust. This study examines how appearance anthropomorphism, cognitive anthropomorphism, and social presence are associated with cognitive trust, and whether privacy concern weakens the relationship between trust and metaverse marketing participation (MMP), operationalised as continuance-oriented participation intention. Survey data from 388 young urban professionals in China with recent metaverse-platform experience were analyzed using PLS-SEM, mediation, moderation, predictive assessment, and importance-performance map analysis. All three cues were positively associated with cognitive trust; social presence was the strongest trust-forming cue, whereas cognitive anthropomorphism was weaker. Cognitive trust provided a significant indirect pathway to MMP, and privacy concern weakened the trust-MMP association. The study contributes to technology and innovation management by presenting a parsimonious privacy-bounded trust pathway: immersive innovation is more likely to support participation intention when interaction feels socially credible and privacy exposure remains manageable.