Extending ITACOM into the Halal Context: Shariah Trust and Perceived Halal Compliance Utility as Islamic Moderators of AR/VR Adoption in Indonesian Halal Travel Agencies

Abstract

Rahmad et al. (2025) developed and validated the Immersive Technology Adoption for Competitive Advantage Model (ITACOM) — a UTAUT-based framework explaining AR/VR adoption in Indonesian tourism organizations through seven antecedents organized across three dimensions (Technology Infrastructure, Strategic-Competitive, and Human-Organizational), accounting for 67.5% of variance in adoption and 62.9% in competitive advantage. While ITACOM provides a robust general framework, it was developed and tested on the broader travel agency population without accounting for the distinctive Islamic-values context that characterizes halal travel agencies and umrah operators — a sub-sector that constitutes a significant and structurally unique segment of Indonesia's tourism industry. This paper presents an ITACOM extension study that augments the original framework with two novel Islamic-context moderating constructs: Shariah trust (ST) and perceived halal compliance utility (PHCU). Using a mixed-methods sequential design — a PLS-SEM quantitative phase (n = 312 respondents from ASITA-registered halal agencies across five provinces) and a semi-structured interview qualitative phase (n = 24 agency owners and managers) — this study tests whether ST and PHCU significantly moderate the ITACOM adoption pathways in the halal-specific organizational context. Results confirm that ST (β = 0.298, p < 0.001) and PHCU (β = 0.176, p < 0.05) are significant positive moderators of the performance expectancy–adoption intention pathway, providing the first empirical evidence that Islamic values systematically shape organizational AR/VR adoption decisions in halal tourism enterprises. The study proposes ITACOM-H (ITACOM-Halal) as a validated extension of the original framework, with direct implications for halal travel agency strategy, ASITA and AMPHURI policy, and the broader literature on technology adoption in Muslim-majority organizational contexts.

Keywords: ITACOM; ITACOM-H; augmented reality; virtual reality; halal travel agencies; Shariah trust; perceived halal compliance utility; PLS-SEM; UTAUT; umrah; Indonesia