Beyond Sights: A Configurational Analysis of Multisensory Pathways to Electronic Word-of-Mouth in VR Cultural Heritage Systems

Virtual reality heritage experiences can be understood as multisensory interaction systems, yet how auditory, haptic, and gestural cues combine at the system level to shape electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intention remains insufficiently understood. Addressing this problem from a configurational systems perspective, this study applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to five auditable interaction cues (acoustic clarity, rhythmic drive, vibrotactile actuation level, gesture complexity, and compound gesture frequency) across a set of widely used VR cultural heritage applications. The results identify two sufficient system-level pathways to high eWOM intention: a rhythm-driven, low-burden pathway and a coordination-driven pathway characterized by clearer audio, stronger rhythmic structure, and tighter haptic and gestural action closure. Low eWOM intention is most consistently associated with weak cue interpretability, limited temporal drive, or unbalanced stimulation patterns, suggesting that isolated enhancement of single channels does not reliably translate into downstream sharing intentions. These findings reposition VR heritage design as a problem of configuring coherent multisensory interaction systems rather than maximizing individual stimuli. The study contributes a bounded, case-comparative account of how auditable cue bundles shape eWOM intention and offers system design guidance for resource-sensitive multisensory coordination in VR heritage applications.