How do virtual tours affect willingness to pay for property in the real estate market?

Abstract: Although virtual tours for properties have existed for some time, it has recently become a highlyrelevant marketing tool for real estate agents. As it enables them to keep up with thecompetition, it has proven especially effective for hard-to-showcase properties. Willingness topay (WTP) explains how much customers are WTP for a product by observing and analyzingthe maximum amount customers feel comfortable paying. There aren't any specific studies thatanalyze what affects this final WTP for property, rather previous research focuses on intentionto purchase. This study aims to fill that gap and answer if consumers are WTP more for aproperty because they are exposed to virtual tours and what effects influence this result throughWTP supported by theory of planned behavior (TPB). TPB works as a mediating factor byexploring different elements which influence the intention to purchase property. Data collectedfrom 65 participants were part of an experimental study analyzing how being exposed to avirtual tour compared to the norm of only seeing 2D pictures would affect potential buyersWTP for property. Respondents were overall willing to pay more when not being exposed tovirtual tours as of this study's observations. This however is likely due to the small sample sizeresulting in big standard deviations as well as no significant findings being observed as allhypotheses were rejected, as most factors could very likely have occurred by chance. However,in line with previous research self-image, perceived behavioral control, attitude, and perceivedvalue were the strongest factors positively affecting the respondents when looking at anapartment through virtual tours compared to only seeing pictures. Seeing yourself live in theapartment, as well as having more control over your purchasing behavior seemed to increasethe intention to purchase the property quite a lot. The general attitude towards it and the valueyou seem to associate the apartment with also had a strong correlation with the intention topurchase the property. Overall, however, no hypotheses were supported and concreteconclusions would be unwise to draw as most observations have a high likelihood of occurringby random error, thereby making them hard to apply in other practices. Instead, further researchis needed to conclude if the positive observations could indeed have significant importancewhen applied through similar methods.