Gajendra Liyanaarachchi

Matthieu Mifsud

Giampaolo Viglia
email: giampaolo.viglia@port.ac.uk

Virtual influencers and data privacy: Introducing the multi-privacy paradox

Keywords: virtual influencer, data privacy, unbalanced privacy risk, data vulnerability, cybercrime, fake profile, multi-privacy paradox, metaverse

Virtual influencers have a growing presence in social media, reshaping the traditional interactions between influencers and followers. Through an interdisciplinary orientation, we assess the implications of this phenomenon for data privacy. Specifically, we argue that, given that the virtual influencer is not a human being, an unbalanced privacy risk arises from possible data vulnerability, cybercrime, and the creation of fake profiles. We explore these risks through a qualitative exploratory study with 28 followers of virtual influencers. Our work culminates with a conceptual framework that highlights what we define as a multiprivacy paradox. We offer actionable ways for organizations to manage privacy and protect consumers dealing with virtual influencers in the metaverse.

Introduction

Virtual influencers are poised to transform the business landscape, offering significant advantages for marketers and brands [START_REF] Campbell | Preparing for an era of deepfakes and AI-generated ads: A framework for understanding responses to manipulated advertising[END_REF]. They outperform traditional influencers in value delivery consistency and availability [START_REF] Leung | Online influencer marketing[END_REF]. Controlled autonomously by AI, these virtual entities, as [START_REF] Sands | False idols: Unpacking the opportunities and challenges of falsity in the context of virtual influencers[END_REF] point out, enhance consumer experiences. Despite the inability to present in real life, virtual influencers can reach an unprecedented audience [START_REF] Lou | Authentically Fake? How Consumers Respond to the Influence of Virtual Influencers[END_REF][START_REF] Mckenna | Resistance and sexuality in virtual worlds: An LGBT perspective[END_REF]). Take, for example, Lil Miquela, the fictional 19-year-old robot influencer. She has amassed a multi-platform following of millions, with high-profile collaborations including Prada, Samsung, and Calvin Klein, and is recognized by Time Magazine as one of the most influential people on the Internet [START_REF] Ahn | Demystifying Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) Influencers: The Effect of Perceived Anthropomorphism and Social Presence on Brand Outcomes[END_REF][START_REF] Mustak | Deepfakes: Deceptions, mitigations, and opportunities[END_REF][START_REF] Robinson | Towards an ontology and ethics of virtual influencers[END_REF][START_REF] Time | The 25 Most Influential People on the Internet[END_REF].

The role of virtual influencers becomes increasingly critical in the context of the metaverse, defined by [START_REF] Mitrushchenkova | Personal Identity in the Metaverse: Challenges and Risks[END_REF] as an Internet evolution into a unified, virtual space that mirrors human life with greater fidelity. Here, users interact, partake in events, and transact with cryptocurrencies. [START_REF] Cheng | Exploring the metaverse in the digital economy: an overview and research framework[END_REF] view this as a new phase in the computing revolution, with [START_REF] Gartner | Gartner Predicts 25% of People Will Spend At Least One Hour Per Day in the metaverse by[END_REF] forecasting that by 2026, a quarter of people will spend at least an hour daily in the metaverse. While the metaverse offers unique societal and business opportunities, concerns arise over privacy risks, as Dwivedi et al. (2022) and [START_REF] Park | A Metaverse: Taxonomy, components, applications, and open challenges[END_REF] highlight, especially given the massive data management it entails.

Despite virtual influencers' success, privacy remains a critical challenge for the future.

Consumer data are vulnerable to manipulation and unauthorized access, undermining influencer credibility (Dwivedi et al., 2022;[START_REF] Sands | False idols: Unpacking the opportunities and challenges of falsity in the context of virtual influencers[END_REF]. More research is needed to develop strategies to protect privacy and minimize consumer vulnerability in the metaverse [START_REF] Zhang | AIoT-enabled smart surveillance for personal data digitalization: Contextual personalization-privacy paradox in smart home[END_REF].

The spread of misinformation through virtual influencers, who manage sensitive data, raises alarms about data breaches and nefarious manipulation (Dwivedi et al., 2022). Data privacy significantly shapes public perception of digital technologies [START_REF] Maseeh | Privacy concerns in e-commerce: A multilevel meta-analysis[END_REF].

Therefore, a comprehensive examination of the relationship between virtual influencers and data privacy is crucial.

The non-human nature of virtual influencers introduces a privacy risk asymmetry, where followers face greater privacy risks, leading to an "unbalanced privacy risk." This paper argues that such risks affect followers' well-being and their relationships with virtual influencers, creating a heightened privacy paradox, a psychological conflict where there's a discrepancy between attitudes and behaviors concerning information sharing.

While existing literature on the privacy paradox highlights inconsistencies in consumer information-sharing behaviors, the unbalanced privacy risk represents a novel challenge, underscoring the need for a broader approach to privacy management. This paper aims to bridge this gap, offering new insights into the complex privacy dynamics in the virtual influencer domain within the metaverse. Through 28 in-depth interviews with virtual influencer followers, this study provides exploratory insights into user interactions and privacy concerns, leading to a proposed framework for managing privacy to sustain virtual influencer credibility (see Figure 1).

The article introduces the "multi-privacy paradox," expanding the traditional privacy paradox to encapsulate the transfer of privacy impact from virtual entities to their legal stakeholders. It advocates for a collective strategy to combat cybercrime and misinformation, thus safeguarding consumer privacy and fostering healthier engagement with virtual influencers in the metaverse.

Literature Review

Privacy paradox

The privacy paradox depicts the discrepancy between attitudes and behaviors in disclosure [START_REF] Barnes | A privacy paradox: Social networking in the United States[END_REF][START_REF] Norberg | The privacy paradox: Personal information disclosure intentions versus behaviors[END_REF], where consumers share information, ignoring their privacy concerns [START_REF] Awad | The personalization privacy paradox: An empirical evaluation of information transparency and the willingness to be profiled online for personalization[END_REF][START_REF] Jorstad | The privacy paradox[END_REF]. Scholars have explained the paradox from normative and behavioral perspectives, yet a resolution remains elusive due to contextual complexities [START_REF] Acquisti | Nudges (and Deceptive Patterns) for Privacy: Six Years Later[END_REF]. Research adopting the normative perspective [START_REF] Dienlin | Is the privacy paradox a relic of the past? An in-depth analysis of privacy attitudes and privacy behaviors[END_REF][START_REF] Dienlin | A longitudinal analysis of the privacy paradox[END_REF][START_REF] Solove | The Myth of the Privacy Paradox[END_REF][START_REF] Smith | Information privacy research: an interdisciplinary review[END_REF] defines the privacy paradox rationally, often overlooking situational influences on disclosure behavior.

For example, followers of virtual influencers divulge information due to social pressure, irrespective of their privacy concerns. Amid rising cybercrime, fake profiles, and data vulnerability, the behavioral perspective [START_REF] Acquisti | Privacy and human behavior in the age of information[END_REF][START_REF] Adjerid | Beyond the privacy paradox: Objective versus relative risk in privacy decision making[END_REF][START_REF] Colnago | Is there a reverse privacy paradox? an exploratory analysis of gaps between privacy perspectives and privacy-seeking behaviors[END_REF][START_REF] Norberg | The privacy paradox: Personal information disclosure intentions versus behaviors[END_REF] gains significance, exemplified by consumers sharing data despite knowing the apparent risks.

The idea of the paradox arises with an attitude reflecting the intention and behavior depicting the actual disclosure decision. [START_REF] Dienlin | Is the privacy paradox a relic of the past? An in-depth analysis of privacy attitudes and privacy behaviors[END_REF] employed two separate methodological approaches to investigate the privacy paradox with the same sample, resulting in disparate outcomes; one acknowledged the privacy paradox's existence, while the other failed to recognize it. However, despite the incongruity in results, the study ultimately suggests that the privacy paradox may no longer hold validity, stating it is a relic of the past.

Likewise, [START_REF] Solove | The Myth of the Privacy Paradox[END_REF] contends that the privacy paradox is a myth, asserting that behavior pertains to context-specific disclosure decisions and attitudes encompass a generic privacy concern. As a result, the two concepts are incomparable to consider a paradox. In a longitudinal study, [START_REF] Dienlin | A longitudinal analysis of the privacy paradox[END_REF] discovered incongruous results while examining the validity of the privacy paradox, highlighting the need for additional research to understand the concept comprehensively.

The primary basis for rejecting the concept arises from studies frequently misconstruing attitudes and behavior in isolation as separate entities. As highlighted by [START_REF] Alashoor | Too Tired and in Too Good of a Mood to Worry About Privacy: Explaining the Privacy Paradox Through the Lens of Effort Level in Information Processing[END_REF], these studies have treated attitude as an outcome, neglecting actual behavior and approaching behavior as decisions without incorporating the influence of attitude. In contrast, [START_REF] Adorjan | A New Privacy Paradox? Youth Agentic Practices of Privacy Management Despite "Nothing to Hide" Online[END_REF] identified a reversal of the attitudebehavior gap, where individuals share more information than intended, extending the original idea of the paradox where behavior overrides attitude. In line with this thinking, [START_REF] Colnago | Is there a reverse privacy paradox? an exploratory analysis of gaps between privacy perspectives and privacy-seeking behaviors[END_REF] introduce the reverse privacy paradox, which reveals that individuals displaying minimal privacy concerns exhibit behaviors safeguarding privacy. However, despite their reciprocal differences, both original and reverse privacy paradoxes substantiate the doctrine's existence, highlighting the prevalent divergence between attitudes and actual behavior. Also, [START_REF] Flender | Type indeterminacy in privacy decisions: the privacy paradox revisited[END_REF] identified similarities between the privacy paradox and quantum theory. They outline that privacy paradox manifests quantum phenomena like indeterminacy, where decisions are determined according to the situation rather than intended, aligning with behavior-dominant privacy decisions.

Conducting systematic literature reviews of the privacy paradox, scholars [START_REF] Barth | The privacy paradox-Investigating discrepancies between expressed privacy concerns and actual online behavior-A systematic literature review[END_REF][START_REF] Gerber | Explaining the privacy paradox: A systematic review of literature investigating privacy attitude and behavior[END_REF], [START_REF] Gotsch | Addressing the privacy paradox on the organizational level: review and future directions[END_REF], and [START_REF] Kokolakis | Privacy attitudes and privacy behaviour: A review of current research on the privacy paradox phenomenon[END_REF] emphasize that while certain studies have raised questions about the validity of the privacy paradox, a substantial majority of research recognize its existence. Furthermore, these reviews demonstrate that the privacy paradox has often been examined within specific contexts, and future research should focus on developing a comprehensive and universally applicable definition. Further, [START_REF] Liyanaarachchi | Managing privacy paradox through national culture: Reshaping online retailing strategy[END_REF] points out that research on the paradox frequently has a confined scope, primarily focusing on specific industries or customer segments.

Acknowledging the scholarly discourse, this study explores the privacy paradox within the metaverse, a comprehensive ecosystem interconnecting consumers, organizations, industries, and global regulatory governance with a broader stakeholder perspective. In the metaverse, data collection encompassing users' online experiences has given rise to instances exemplifying the privacy paradox [START_REF] Hilken | Disrupting marketing realities: A research agenda for investigating the psychological mechanisms of next-generation experiences with reality-enhancing technologies[END_REF]. This paradox ingrains itself within the metaverse due to the progressively mounting value of consumer data over time, prompting organizations, consumers, and regulators to consider intensified privacy protection. Further, the continuous availability of data in the metaverse after its intended use perpetuates the persistence of the heightened privacy risk [START_REF] Buck | Security and Privacy in the Metaverse: The Threat of the Digital Human[END_REF]. [START_REF] Chan | Theoretical explanations for firms' information privacy behaviors[END_REF] categorized information privacy research into three distinct tiers: personal, organizational, and sectoral, underscoring the deficiency of studies addressing the organizational level. This gap in organizational-level research is evident, as research predominantly examines the issue from a personal consumer perspective (Liyanaararchchi et al., 2021;[START_REF] Martin | The role of data privacy in marketing[END_REF]. [START_REF] Gotsch | Addressing the privacy paradox on the organizational level: review and future directions[END_REF] suggest that organizations can address the privacy paradox by altering their privacy strategy, structural framework, and human resource practices and introducing new services; the current study addresses the organizational literature gap by synthesizing all three levels-consumers, organizations, and the sector-to create a comprehensive global ecosystem that mirrors the evolving metaverse.

Metaverse and virtual influencers

The word "metaverse" first appeared in the science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson named Snow Crash in 1992 [START_REF] Mourtzis | Human centric platforms for personalized value creation in metaverse[END_REF]. Originally, the word is a crossword made up of the terms "meta" (i.e., beyond) and "universum" (i.e., all things, everybody, all people, the whole world), which was later assembled into "metaverse" (meta and universe). The metaverse is, therefore, a meta-universe, a universe that goes beyond the one we know.

Journalists, practitioners, and academics now use this word to refer to any structured and open virtual world.

Even though the concept was coined three decades ago, the metaverse has recently gained worldwide attraction [START_REF] Kim | Trust me, trust me not: A nuanced view of influencer marketing on social media[END_REF]. It has been labeled as a new and disruptive paradigm that can potentially transform future business and social life [START_REF] Barrera | Marketing in the Metaverse: Conceptual understanding, framework, and research agenda[END_REF][START_REF] Belk | Money, possessions, and ownership in the Metaverse: NFTs, cryptocurrencies, Web3 and Wild Markets[END_REF]. The metaverse will revolutionize nearly every industry and "value functions" of companies in the future [START_REF] Boyd | Virtual reality and its impact on B2B marketing: A valuein-use perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Hollensen | Metaverse-the new marketing universe[END_REF]. It could offer a unique opportunity for brands to strengthen their relationships with consumers by delivering new levels of customer interaction, engagement, and value cocreation [START_REF] Barrera | Marketing in the Metaverse: Conceptual understanding, framework, and research agenda[END_REF][START_REF] Shen | How to promote user purchase in metaverse? A systematic literature review on consumer behavior research and virtual commerce application design[END_REF]. Therefore, technology firms such as Facebook (now renamed Meta) or Microsoft are financing millions of dollars in building virtual worlds consistent with the notion of the metaverse [START_REF] Kelly | Facebook Changes Its Company Name to Meta[END_REF].

The metaverse represents a digital space of user-controlled avatars, virtual environments, and other computer-generated elements like virtual influencers. In this virtual world, humans (represented by avatars) can use their virtual identities to communicate and collaborate to generate value and co-create experiences [START_REF] Gursoy | The metaverse in the hospitality and tourism industry: An overview of current trends and future research directions[END_REF]. Further, as the boundary between human and bot-like behavior becomes less separate [START_REF] Robinson | Towards an ontology and ethics of virtual influencers[END_REF], a virtual influencer can have a considerable network of followers. It can be regarded as "a trusted taste-maker in one or several niches" (De Veirman et al., 2017, p. 798). Leveraging the immersive nature of this virtual realm, virtual influencers have the potential to establish more seamless connections with human participants. However, these interactions can result in heightened data collection and the potential for misuse. Due to unauthorized access, individuals' personal information becomes susceptible to manipulation, forgery, or misrepresentation. Furthermore, the invasion of followers' online profiles creates an unbalanced privacy risk, especially given that virtual influencers are non-human entities.

Thus, the connection between virtual influencers and data privacy warrants a closer examination from both practical and academic perspectives.

Virtual influencers are computer-generated entities replicating human physical attributes, behaviors, and personalities [START_REF] Park | A Metaverse: Taxonomy, components, applications, and open challenges[END_REF]. These entities are generated through a fusion of 3D modeling and artificial intelligence (AI) to react to contextual situations and stimuli (Baudier et al., 2023). Employing virtual influencers allows brands the autonomy to hold their representatives in alignment with their creative concepts and represent a brand's values [START_REF] Arsenyan | Almost human? A comparative case study on the social media presence of virtual influencers[END_REF]Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017), while human influencers aspire to garner recognition and cultivate cultural influence by sharing content on their social profiles [START_REF] Audrezet | Authenticity under threat: When social media influencers need to go beyond self-presentation[END_REF]. Moreover, virtual influencers offer cost benefits over time since traditional influencer marketing necessitates budget allocations and specific organizational endeavors (Tan & Liew, 2020;[START_REF] Arsenyan | Almost human? A comparative case study on the social media presence of virtual influencers[END_REF].

Only a limited number of studies have delved into the realm of virtual influencers, concentrating on understanding engagement motivations or disparities from real-world influencers [START_REF] Arsenyan | Almost human? A comparative case study on the social media presence of virtual influencers[END_REF][START_REF] Lou | Authentically Fake? How Consumers Respond to the Influence of Virtual Influencers[END_REF], investigating influencers' intersectionality [START_REF] Miyake | I am a virtual girl from Tokyo: Virtual influencers, digital-orientalism and the (Im) materiality of race and gender[END_REF] as well as addressing specific ethical concerns [START_REF] Robinson | Towards an ontology and ethics of virtual influencers[END_REF]. Nonetheless, the potential privacy risks associated with virtual influencers and the metaverse have remained relatively unexplored, prompting calls for empirical investigations into this subject [START_REF] Barrera | Marketing in the Metaverse: Conceptual understanding, framework, and research agenda[END_REF]Dwivedi et al., 2022).

Data collection practices exhibit considerable diversity contingent upon the particular metaverse platform, service provider, and local regulations in the metaverse. For instance, users provide details such as usernames and e-mail addresses during the registration and account creation process. Additionally, behavioral and interaction data are accumulated when users engage with virtual influencers or avatars. Information about the user's device, location, virtual currency transactions, and social interactions (including messages, chats, and virtual engagements) also contribute to the potential data collection. In the metaverse, data is typically analyzed using a combination of predictive algorithms, real-time customer data analytics, and virtual navigation tools [START_REF] Kliestik | Live shopping in the metaverse: Visual and spatial analytics, cognitive artificial intelligence techniques and algorithms, and immersive digital simulations[END_REF]. These technologies allow for the processing and interpreting various types of data generated within the metaverse, enabling insights into user behaviors, preferences, interactions, and experiences.

Because of this extensive data collection, the metaverse denotes a significantly higher privacy risk. As a result, scholars have stressed the ethical implications of marketing within the metaverse, emphasizing the necessity for responsible and sustainable data collection and use (Dwivedi et al., 2022). The potential for unethical use of metaverse data is increasingly significant, with threats to consumer privacy arising from many forms, such as cybercrimes, identity theft, and blackmail [START_REF] Hilken | Disrupting marketing realities: A research agenda for investigating the psychological mechanisms of next-generation experiences with reality-enhancing technologies[END_REF][START_REF] Hollensen | Metaverse marketing: How the metaverse will shape the future of consumer research and practice[END_REF][START_REF] Rauschnabel | Antecedents to the adoption of augmented reality smart glasses: A closer look at privacy risks[END_REF]. Understanding these challenges is thus crucial for firms and academics [START_REF] Hollensen | Metaverse marketing: How the metaverse will shape the future of consumer research and practice[END_REF].

Conceptual underpinnings

The research introduces a conceptual framework (see Figure 1) encompassing data vulnerability, cybercrime, and fake profiles as the antecedents for the emergence of unbalanced privacy. Aligned with this framework, we construct exploratory propositions to integrate the empirical results outlined in [START_REF] Viglia | Engagement and value cocreation within a multi-stakeholder service ecosystem[END_REF]. The investigation posits that the cumulative impact of data vulnerability, cybercrime, and fake profiles culminates in an asymmetrical state of consumer privacy concerning virtual influencers.

Data Vulnerability

Virtual influencer marketing involves lifestyles and consumption trends to engage consumers and induce them to purchase sponsored products [START_REF] Sands | False idols: Unpacking the opportunities and challenges of falsity in the context of virtual influencers[END_REF]. Followers' personal information is available in the metaverse infinitely after an online engagement, leading to data vulnerability. Data vulnerability can be defined as the exploitation of personal information through unauthorized access, violating the original intention of data collection [START_REF] Martin | The role of data privacy in marketing[END_REF]. It represents an enormous threat to companies. For example, the hacking of the dating app 'Heyyo' exposed the personal details, images, location data, phone numbers, and dating preferences of nearly 72,000 users (Brown, 2020). Consumers are concerned about the risk of disclosure mainly due to losing control over data [START_REF] Ameen | The personalisation-privacy paradox: Consumer interaction with smart technologies and shopping mall loyalty[END_REF][START_REF] Audrezet | Authenticity under threat: When social media influencers need to go beyond self-presentation[END_REF].

Consumer data vulnerability arises due to the powerlessness that occurs from an unbalance in marketplace interactions where the consumer has no control or ownership over data [START_REF] Echeverri | Consumer vulnerability during mobility service interactions: causes, forms and coping[END_REF][START_REF] Wanjugu | The paradoxical role of relationship quality on consumer privacy: Its effects on relinquishing and safeguarding information[END_REF]. Further, the dependency of virtual influencers on the metaverse for continuous correspondence with followers increases the risk of data vulnerability. Advanced advertising employing AI-driven manipulation techniques convinces consumers to embrace misleading perceptions, ultimately rendering them vulnerable to deceptive practices [START_REF] Campbell | Preparing for an era of deepfakes and AI-generated ads: A framework for understanding responses to manipulated advertising[END_REF]. On the one hand, consumers operate without a realistic idea of the gravity of unauthorized access and continue to share data, believing that the organizations can protect privacy [START_REF] Nunan | Collection: Privacy and research ethics[END_REF]. On the other hand, they indirectly contribute to a data breach by ignoring self-regulatory privacy behavior, leading to data vulnerability [START_REF] Martin | The role of data privacy in marketing[END_REF]. Moreover, consumers experience a higher vulnerability due to the optimistic attitude toward information disclosure, expecting gratification, social status, and hedonic benefits [START_REF] Brough | Consumer privacy during (and after) the COVID-19 pandemic[END_REF][START_REF] Langenderfer | Consumer vulnerability to scams, swindles, and fraud: A new theory of visceral influences on persuasion[END_REF].

Consumers engaged with virtual influencers are a highly vulnerable segment to data breaches with the increased disclosure of personal information, IP addresses, and social media profiles. In the United States, 91 % of people accept online terms of service without reading them, leading to data vulnerability [START_REF] Guynn | What you need to know before clicking agree' on that terms of service agreement or privacy policy[END_REF]. Hackers can manipulate the algorithm, inducing consumers to respond to false messages and obtain sensitive information, creating financial and psychological damage [START_REF] Sands | False idols: Unpacking the opportunities and challenges of falsity in the context of virtual influencers[END_REF].

The celebrity status of virtual influencers overshadows the ability to determine the severity of privacy risk as followers perceive virtual avatars as being harmless compared with actual personalities [START_REF] Appel | The future of social media in marketing[END_REF]. It is, therefore, essential to examine the coping mechanisms that consumers, organizations, and stakeholders can use to minimize data vulnerability [START_REF] Liyanaarachchi | Managing privacy paradox through national culture: Reshaping online retailing strategy[END_REF]. Such research should elaborate on the differences in vulnerability between consumers and organizations [START_REF] Hill | Consumer vulnerability[END_REF].

Cybercrime

Cybercrime is any illegal activity carried out in cyberspace through unauthorized access to data, violating privacy. Cybercrime is the greatest threat to businesses and individuals compared with other criminal activities in the metaverse [START_REF] Ameen | Keeping customers' data secure : A cross-cultural study of cybersecurity compliance among the Gen-Mobile workforce[END_REF][START_REF] Dehghanniri | Crime scripting: A systematic review[END_REF]. Statista estimates that the global cost of cybercrime will increase rapidly in the next five years, rising from $8.44 trillion in 2022 to $23.84 trillion by 2027 [START_REF] Fleck | Cybercrime Expected To Skyrocket in Coming Years[END_REF].

However, most organizations still focus on improving online systems without developing a comprehensive privacy strategy. [START_REF] Liyanaarachchi | Online privacy as an integral component of strategy: allaying customer fears and building loyalty[END_REF][START_REF] Martin | Research: A Strong Privacy Policy Can Save Your Company Millions[END_REF].

Cybercriminals exploit consumer vulnerabilities through advanced online tracking systems. The celebrity status of virtual influencers depicts an unquestioned trust [START_REF] Lou | Authentically Fake? How Consumers Respond to the Influence of Virtual Influencers[END_REF] that leads to accepting fake information, providing higher opportunities for cybercrime [START_REF] Robinson | Towards an ontology and ethics of virtual influencers[END_REF]. The desire to engage with a virtual influencer in the metaverse as a social need contributes to ignoring the cybercrime threat. Cybercriminals can forge the identity of a virtual influencer and obtain data from a follower through malware [START_REF] Abroshan | Phishing happens beyond technology: the effects of human behaviors and demographics on each step of a phishing process[END_REF][START_REF] Buck | Security and Privacy in the Metaverse: The Threat of the Digital Human[END_REF].

Managing consumer privacy and minimizing cybercrime in the metaverse is vital for the success of virtual influencers, creators/owners, and sponsors. Firms should improve surveillance of fake consumer profiles and track abnormal activity to prevent cybercrime [START_REF] Bromium | Cybercriminals earning over $3B annually exploiting social platforms[END_REF]. For example, the data breach of the dating site 'Ashley Madison' led to resignations, divorces, and suicides, as the details of over 37 million members from over 40 countries [START_REF] Lamont | Life after the Ashley Madison affair[END_REF]. Followers' vulnerability to cybercrime will directly damage the brand equity of sponsors of virtual influencers [START_REF] Kim | Trust me, trust me not: A nuanced view of influencer marketing on social media[END_REF]. One in five organizations is affected by malware distributed via social media [START_REF] Bromium | Cybercriminals earning over $3B annually exploiting social platforms[END_REF], and cybercriminals continue to exploit corporate secrets through industrial espionage [START_REF] Basuchoudhary | Snatched secrets: Cybercrime and trade secrets modelling a firm's decision to report a theft of trade secrets[END_REF].

Educating consumers on the gravity of sharing information with virtual influencers is crucial for the industry to move forward with assurance. Existing research on privacy has addressed the impact of cybercrime purely on a symmetrical ideology depicting the effects on both parties (organization and consumer). However, we argue that this reciprocal impact is insufficient to determine the effect of privacy on the followers. The intended two-way communication, which is the usual practice online, is one dimensional as the virtual influencer demonstrates limited privacy risk due to the artificial identity, resulting in an unbalanced impact on data privacy skewed towards the followers and consumers.

Despite the significance of cybercrime, there is limited research examining its impact on consumer vulnerability [START_REF] De Kimpe | What we think we know about cybersecurity: An investigation of the relationship between perceived knowledge, internet trust, and protection motivation in a cybercrime context[END_REF]. Recent studies elaborate that existing security controls and management policies cannot protect consumers of the metaverse from cybercrime and cyber-attacks (Dwivedi et al. et al., 2022). Thus, we argue that the negligence of followers toward their privacy due to the gratification of following an online avatar can result in victimization.

Fake profiles

As consumers can determine how they want to be seen or known, personal identity in a digital reality such as the metaverse can be illusionary or, at its extreme, completely fake [START_REF] Mitrushchenkova | Personal Identity in the Metaverse: Challenges and Risks[END_REF]. Consumers can provide fake data in their profiles or accounts or even create fake profiles. They thus can have multiple identities or accounts. While most users provide partially fake data in their user profiles to preserve anonymity and privacy or to provide online representations that are closer to their ideal selves [START_REF] Belk | Extended self in a digital world[END_REF], others create fake profiles impersonating fictitious or real persons to spread fake news or access a victim's financial or personal data [START_REF] Smaili | Metaverse: welcome to the new fraud marketplace[END_REF]. Privacy invasions are among the most common and harmful cybercrimes [START_REF] Ramalingam | Fake profile detection techniques in large-scale online social networks: A comprehensive review[END_REF]. For instance, in the second quarter of 2022, the social network platform Facebook had to remove 1.4 billion fake accounts to fight against potentially fraudulent activities [START_REF] Statista | Global number of fake accounts taken action on by Facebook from 4th quarter 2017 to 2nd quarter[END_REF].

Fake profiles damage user privacy and substantially impact the sustainability of the platform business model and companies that rely on the accuracy of the user data [START_REF] Krombholz | Fake identities in social media: A case study on the sustainability of the Facebook business model[END_REF][START_REF] Nunan | Exploring reidentification risk: Is anonymisation a promise we can keep?[END_REF]. These cybercrimes represent key security and privacy concerns while moving to the metaverse [START_REF] Di Pietro | Metaverse: Security and Privacy Issues[END_REF].

Like social media platforms, the metaverse enables trolling and bullying due to the anonymity of fictitious user identities, which conceals potential negative consequences.

Consumers in the metaverse may interact with people represented by avatars without knowing if they are real or fake, so they may provide fake data or create fake profiles to rebalance their perceived privacy asymmetry while interacting with virtual influencers. In turn, creating wholly or partially fake identities may represent a critical threat to the metaverse business model as it leads to serious privacy concerns.

Empirical Study: Methodology

Given the dearth of studies on the interception between virtual influencers and data privacy, we conducted in-depth interviews with 28 followers of virtual influencers. This qualitative approach, based on the codification of participants' interviews [START_REF] Gioia | Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: Notes on the Gioia methodology[END_REF], enables the emergence of exploratory insights to assess "how" followers perceive the interaction with influencers and "what" their main concerns are in terms of privacy. We stopped at 28 participants because we reached code saturation.

Research approach and procedure

To exploit the exploratory power of the qualitative analysis, we selected purposive sampling, maximizing variation to capture solid patterns [START_REF] Bell | Business research methods[END_REF]. We selected different participants in terms of backgrounds, educational levels, occupations, and ages.

Compared to the average number of interviews which sits between 9 and 17 participants (see [START_REF] Hennink | Sample sizes for saturation in qualitative research: A systematic review of empirical tests[END_REF], this heterogeneous sample required a higher sample (28 participants), due to the need to reach code saturation. We interviewed participants from November 2022 to January 2023.

The key research questions were: i) what are your concerns about data privacy when dealing with virtual influencers? ii) how would you compare these concerns to the ones you would have interacting with human influencers? iii) who is responsible for the virtual influencers' behavior?" iv) do you regret sharing your information with virtual influencers in the metaverse v) what your concerns on cybercrime and fake profiles are? Data from the interviews were verified, compared, and triangulated [START_REF] Yin | Case study research : Design and methods[END_REF].

Data analysis

Three coders manually validated the coding by measuring the level of agreement using a percentage agreement method. An intercoder agreement was carried out, and the percentage overlap between coders was 85% The three coders discussed the remaining 15% of data and reached an agreement.

We approached interview analysis and data interpretation through a general framework [START_REF] Yin | Case study research : Design and methods[END_REF]. First, we analyzed each interview singularly through a within-case approach [START_REF] Charmaz | Grounded theory methods in social justice research[END_REF]. We analyzed emerging themes through a coding system of three stages [START_REF] Gioia | Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: Notes on the Gioia methodology[END_REF].

In the first stage, we coded interviews and organized them into a set of 1 st -order concepts: Perceptions toward data privacy when dealing with influencers; Difference between virtual and human influencers in terms of privacy and data vulnerability; Cybercrime issues; Fake identity; Specific responsibilities for influencers' behavior. In the second stage, we developed a 2 nd -order analysis to establish links between data and develop new concepts: Data vulnerability, cybercrime, and fake profiles. In the third stage, we aggregated key themes into newly developed dimensions: Unbalanced privacy and the extended privacy paradox. We explored participants' experiences and businesses by considering research questions as lenses through the coding system.

Discussion of findings

Based on the findings in Figure 1, we develop a conceptual framework and a set of exploratory propositions that identify three sources of consumers unbalanced privacy risks when interacting with virtual influencers (i.e., data vulnerability, cybercrime, fake profiles).

Our results also suggest that this unbalanced privacy leads to a multi-privacy paradox, a broader psychological dilemma than the existing one.

Multi-privacy paradox

Data vulnerability

The findings highlight that followers discern a pronounced sense of data vulnerability due to their interactions with virtual influencers. The participants believe their data can be manipulated and used for malicious purposes. Data vulnerability can influence the psychological wellbeing of consumers, and a fear of engaging with online entities due to data misuse [START_REF] Martin | The role of data privacy in marketing[END_REF]. Also, followers are concerned about the risk of disclosing their personal information mainly due to losing control over data [START_REF] Ameen | The personalisation-privacy paradox: Consumer interaction with smart technologies and shopping mall loyalty[END_REF][START_REF] Audrezet | Authenticity under threat: When social media influencers need to go beyond self-presentation[END_REF]. "Compared to human-to-human interactions, I fear that my dialogues can be misused as no one is responsible. I can't do anything about it and feel I have no protection as it is a one-sided risk" [GP]. This perceived data vulnerability arises due to the powerlessness that occurs from an unbalance with data privacy where the followers have no control or ownership over data [START_REF] Echeverri | Consumer vulnerability during mobility service interactions: causes, forms and coping[END_REF][START_REF] Wanjugu | The paradoxical role of relationship quality on consumer privacy: Its effects on relinquishing and safeguarding information[END_REF].

Thinking at their experiences, they are particularly concerned about screenshots: "I feel that they store all my information and take screenshots. "I am worried that these may be used against me by someone online" [MD]. Accordingly, they do not feel free to share information as they worry about retaliation. "Sometimes virtual influencers look very artificial, and I would like to offer critiques to improve them. But I am scared to do so, as anyone can use my data and retaliate with a personal attack" [GC]. The data concern extends beyond the company behind the virtual influencer, also involving third parties. "There is a lot of curiosity about virtual influencers. This attracts the attention of third parties who might hold that information against me.

I feel vulnerable as they don't have a risk as I do with data" [MP].

This vulnerability significantly impacts the broader adversaries on consumers' social employment or business relationships [START_REF] Liyanaarachchi | Online privacy as an integral component of strategy: allaying customer fears and building loyalty[END_REF]. This leads to our first proposition:

P1: Follower data vulnerability is more pronounced with virtual influencers than with human influencers, leading to unbalanced privacy.

Cybercrime

The findings show that followers are concerned about being exposed one-dimensionally to cyber criminals due to communicating with an artificial avatar. Engagement with virtual influencers requires sharing information in the metaverse, thus exposing followers to cybercrime risks. Cybercrime is any illegal activity carried out in cyberspace through unauthorized access to data, violating privacy. It is the greatest threat to businesses and individuals compared with other criminal activities in the metaverse [START_REF] Ameen | Keeping customers' data secure : A cross-cultural study of cybersecurity compliance among the Gen-Mobile workforce[END_REF][START_REF] Dehghanniri | Crime scripting: A systematic review[END_REF]. Cybercriminals can forge the identity of a virtual influencer and obtain data from a follower through malware [START_REF] Abroshan | Phishing happens beyond technology: the effects of human behaviors and demographics on each step of a phishing process[END_REF][START_REF] Buck | Security and Privacy in the Metaverse: The Threat of the Digital Human[END_REF]. In such a context, followers tend to feel that cybercrimes could occur while interacting with virtual influencers. Cybercriminals target actual people rather than virtual avatars, forming an unbalanced privacy risk: "I am worried about my data as they remain in the metaverse. In summary, the interviewees are concerned about the one-sided risk with cybercriminals while dealing with virtual characters. They are worried about the lack of assurance of their data and privacy. They believe cybercriminals target them due to financial resources and possession of wealth being real people compared with virtual characters. Building on the preceding discussion, the second proposition is that:

P2: Cybercriminals specifically target followers of virtual influencers on their

powerlessness in data sharing, contributing to an unbalanced privacy situation.

Fake profiles

Virtual influencers are often ideal models, almost heroes. Therefore, consumers might want to create a perfect (i.e., fake) persona to minimize the risk of exposure to privacy due to unbalanced risk. Further, followers can be reluctant to expose their true identity and to be part of any fake news. In 2019, Lil Miquela, a CGI influencer, publicized fake information about experiencing a sexual assault during a ride share in Los Angeles. This dissemination prompted concerns of potential harm and distress among her followers [START_REF] Block | Discordant storytelling, 'honest fakery,' identity peddling: How uncanny CGI characters are jamming public relations and influencer practices[END_REF]. Therefore, stringent legislative measures are necessary to regulate fake profiles and communications by virtual influencers to mitigate deceptive practices in the context of sponsored products and the promotion of fictitious experiences [START_REF] Lou | Authentically Fake? How Consumers Respond to the Influence of Virtual Influencers[END_REF]. Artificial intelligence systems can interchange the faces or voices of any individual, including celebrities, and create fake communications using virtual influencers [START_REF] Campbell | Preparing for an era of deepfakes and AI-generated ads: A framework for understanding responses to manipulated advertising[END_REF].

Consequently, substantial user-generated content exhibits conspicuous fabrication:

"Virtual influencers operate in an artificial realm. I would not share my true persona, and I am sure other followers would behave like me" [NT]. "I was interacting with a follower of a virtual influencer. However, I realized it was a fake profile" [SS].

To summarize, while interviewees enjoy watching the content produced by virtual influencers, they are concerned about having meaningful touchpoints during the live stream.

They are worried about fake profiles influencing their privacy due to the unbalanced risk.

Moreover, participants create fake profiles to protect their identity: "I enjoy watching virtual influencers, but I do not interact with them with my real profile due to the risk of identity theft and fraud" [DF]. This is evident as exposing their genuine identity online renders consumers susceptible to personal hazards such as blackmail, identity theft, and harassment, prompting them to conceal their true identity [START_REF] Mustak | Deepfakes: Deceptions, mitigations, and opportunities[END_REF].

This leads to our third proposition:

P3:

The followers create fake profiles to protect their identity due to the unbalanced privacy risk associated with virtual influencers,

Unbalanced privacy

Sharing customer data with external entities can enhance service quality and business returns.

However, inter-organizational data sharing poses challenges despite potential advantages, exposing companies to uncontrollable privacy risks [START_REF] Upadhyay | Demystifying blockchain: A critical analysis of challenges, pplications, and opportunities[END_REF]. This can lead to unbalanced privacy, where data is used beyond its original purpose, increasing risks beyond customer awareness [START_REF] Schneider | Protecting customer privacy when marketing with second-party data[END_REF]. Customers prefer balanced privacy with transparency and control, rather than companies having sole authority over data use [START_REF] Dwivedi | Resistance to innovation: A dynamic apability model based enquiry into retailers' resistance to blockchain adaptation[END_REF]. Consumers are reluctant to share data with dominant, manipulative companies, underscoring the importance of equal privacy risk [START_REF] Ameen | The personalisation-privacy paradox: Consumer interaction with smart technologies and shopping mall loyalty[END_REF]. The lack of flexibility in managing sophisticated systems like biometrics also causes unbalanced privacy risks for consumers [START_REF] Liyanaarachchi | Privacy in hospitality: managing biometric and biographic data with immersive technology[END_REF]. Organizations' complete data control renders consumers vulnerable to an unbalanced exchange, potentially causing privacy violations [START_REF] Tan | Trust in blockchain-enabled exchanges: Future directions in blockchain marketing[END_REF]. A similar vulnerability arises with virtual influencers.

Consumers face greater privacy risks than virtual influencers, influenced by a one-sided risk perspective. This unbalance leads to negative perceptions and reduced willingness to share data.

Figure 2. Privacy paradox

The privacy paradox stems from the reciprocal relationship between consumers and firms involving mutual benefits. Consumers share data to gain benefits while taking on privacy risks. This direct exchange, the first level in Figure 2, underlies the paradox. The current privacy paradox occurs at level 1, where a consumer's privacy risk ties directly to a single entity. The consumer and entity have a reciprocal risk-reward relationship. The consumer gets a benefit for providing data, while the firm sees a business return based on the risk level.

However, virtual influencers lack real entity status, removing reciprocity. This leaves consumers with an unbalanced privacy risk. Interviewees are concerned that their relationship with virtual influencers is uneven in terms of privacy. Specifically, they feel weaker compared to their counterpart. This negative feeling decreases the trustworthiness of the interactions and the fear of privacy violation. The interviews suggest that data vulnerability experienced due to being the human element in the relationship leads to unbalanced privacy.

Cybercriminals target followers due to this singular exposure as followers share sensitive personal information compared to virtual characters with no data. Moreover, fake profiles that depict virtual influencers can obtain access to personal data and devices, prompting followers to create an ideal self or forge their true identity, resulting in unbalanced privacy.

The current study proposes three primary sources of data vulnerability, cybercrime, and fake profiles leading to unbalanced privacy.

We define unbalanced privacy as:

"The privacy risk originates from engaging with a virtual influencer resulting in onedimensional exposure due to an uneven power relationship."

Also, the interviews suggest that the followers experience a privacy paradox when dealing with virtual influencers due to unbalanced privacy. Thus, while they welcome this new technology, they prefer human influencers because they worry about unbalanced privacy.

Third parties' utilization and sharing of data obtained through virtual influencers as intermediaries constitute an unmanageable threat for followers, as privacy breaches remain concealed and beyond control.

"When interacting with virtual influencers, I feel I am alone with unknown forces in the metaverse. Sometimes, I regret posting certain ideas, and I know companies are keen to know consumer preferences just for advertising purposes" [BY]. "There is a huge unbalance here.

I offer my data, and I get pre-coded information from a robot in exchange which has no risk [FK]. The consumers acknowledge the hedonic benefits of sharing information but are simultaneously worried about the privacy risk. It is fun dealing with a virtual influencer, but I fear later about the whole thing as everyone sees my data. Who knows whether a hacker has already targeted me" [GP]. "I enjoy following Miquela as I believe in equal rights but do not trust them. I don't know who controls them. I always doubt sharing information, as I don't want to be a victim of a data breach" [SA].

The consumers indicate a dilemma on the credibility of virtual influencers primarily due to the hidden agendas of business and commercial interest in using personal information:

"I welcome this technological advancement, but I am skeptical here. I know they promote companies as I get a lot of personal ads through social media" [KP]. "How do they use my data, and who are these people? It is better to know who is responsible for my privacy" [SD].

The evidence suggests that the followers experience a deeper level of privacy paradox due to the anonymity of the sources that control the virtual influencers. This is outside the existing privacy paradox doctrine, which denotes the discrepancy in attitude and behavior of sharing information with a single party, such as a retailer, bank, etc. We argue that the privacy paradox shifts beyond this reciprocal relationship toward a multi-stakeholder level with the additional privacy threat beyond a single organization. The data brokering industry, estimated to generate US$ 200 billion annually in revenue, significantly influences consumer privacy [START_REF] Duxfield | Personal data of thousands of Australians sold for just $US60[END_REF]. Data brokering is a substantial threat to consumer privacy as the impact of a privacy violation is not immediately identifiable by a consumer. In 2018, hackers collected over 244,000 credit card details from a major airline carrier and sold the data on the Dark Web, earning an estimated US$12.2 million [START_REF] Kpmg | Global Banking Fraud Survey[END_REF]. Moreover, the Dark Web, functioning as a black market for data, is estimated to contribute to over US$ 1.5 trillion annually [START_REF] Wilson | Disrupting dark web supply chains to protect precious data[END_REF]. Transactions on the Dark Web occur inconspicuously, without direct evidence of the exchanges.

From the interviews' evidence, the study proposes that:

P4: Due to the unbalanced privacy perceptions, consumers experience a multi-privacy paradox with the anonymity of information users.

Implications, limitations, and further research agenda

Theoretical implications

This study offers two distinct theoretical contributions. Firstly, we introduce the concept of "unbalanced privacy risk," which presents a unique privacy scenario for consumers engaging with virtual influencers. This novel concept emerges at the intersection of data vulnerability, cybercrime, and fake profiles. The prominence of virtual influencers has recently garnered significant attention, particularly in connection with the metaverse [START_REF] Hollensen | Metaverse marketing: How the metaverse will shape the future of consumer research and practice[END_REF]. The concept of unbalanced privacy responds to scholars' calls to investigate potential privacy risks associated with virtual influencers and the metaverse, a topic that has remained relatively unexplored, prompting appeals for empirical research in this domain [START_REF] Appel | The future of social media in marketing[END_REF][START_REF] Barrera | Marketing in the Metaverse: Conceptual understanding, framework, and research agenda[END_REF]Dwivedi et al., 2022).

Unbalanced privacy contributes to the literature as a distinctive privacy challenge faced by followers of virtual influencers arising from privacy risks inherent in interactions involving artificial personas. Further, unbalanced privacy illuminates how consumers experience a sense of powerlessness in controlling their data within systems driven by nonhuman characters empowered by artificial intelligence.

Second, this study contributes significantly to the existing literature by introducing a multi-privacy paradox, elucidated through the lens of unbalanced privacy risk. Our principal theoretical advancement, the multi-privacy paradox, holds wide-ranging relevance to the privacy literature. In contrast, the unbalanced privacy risk represents a distinct phenomenon faced by followers of virtual influencers, which extends to their interactions with any non-human system or platform characterized by asymmetric disclosure risk. The multi-privacy paradox is a pioneering extension that addresses scholarly calls [START_REF] Barth | The privacy paradox-Investigating discrepancies between expressed privacy concerns and actual online behavior-A systematic literature review[END_REF][START_REF] Colnago | Is there a reverse privacy paradox? an exploratory analysis of gaps between privacy perspectives and privacy-seeking behaviors[END_REF][START_REF] Dienlin | A longitudinal analysis of the privacy paradox[END_REF][START_REF] Gerber | Explaining the privacy paradox: A systematic review of literature investigating privacy attitude and behavior[END_REF][START_REF] Gotsch | Addressing the privacy paradox on the organizational level: review and future directions[END_REF][START_REF] Kokolakis | Privacy attitudes and privacy behaviour: A review of current research on the privacy paradox phenomenon[END_REF][START_REF] Liyanaarachchi | Managing privacy paradox through national culture: Reshaping online retailing strategy[END_REF][START_REF] Martin | The role of data privacy in marketing[END_REF] on the literature gap of privacy paradox by synthesizing consumers, organizations and sectors to create a comprehensive global ecosystem. (Keely, 2001). Trevor McFedries and Sara Decou founded Brud, a tech company that creates virtual avatars (Lawn, 2018).

The involvement of various stakeholders at different risk levels heightens the privacy paradox. Consumers cannot determine the full privacy risk as it goes beyond one entity. To address this complexity, we introduce the multi-privacy paradox in Figure 3. While applied here specifically, the multi-privacy paradox can be used for any unbalanced, multi-entity privacy situation across industries, sectors, or ecosystems.

The multi-privacy paradox will provide the foundation for future studies, providing a solution for the normative and behavioral ideologies debate. More specifically, it strengthens the behavior-dominant understanding of the paradox. Also, the paper provides a universally applicable definition of the paradox, manifesting a broader appeal to manage privacy with assurance and consistent strategy. The multi-privacy paradox will provide a new dimension to managing future challenges of the paradox, especially with the metaverse and immersive technology.

We define the multi-privacy paradox as: "A state that arises through unbalanced privacy where consumers experience a more profound mismatch between privacy concerns and self-disclosure due to the anonymity of the users of information."

Managerial implications

This paper provides three actionable implications for practice. First, organizations should understand the broader application of the multi-privacy paradox on stakeholders and consider it a core element in designing the digital strategy. This will enable organizations to build a privacy-conscious culture and a decision-making process adhering to a privacy protection strategy. This strategic stance aligns with Gotsch & chögel's (2021) recommendation for an organizational-level approach to address the privacy paradox. Drawing from Liyanaarachchi (2020), organizations can proactively detect and address privacy breaches in real-time. For instance, in identity theft cases, the interconnected stakeholder network can rapidly trace the origin of the data breach, including unauthorized access or hacker involvement. Employing traceability mechanisms with a designated path and data violation trail ensures swift and accurate breach detection. This transparency aligns seamlessly with the dynamics of the privacy paradox, reassuring customers of the organization's capability to rectify privacy violations. Consequently, this minimizes the disparity between the privacy paradox context and customer perceptions, strengthening their faith in the organization's adeptness in safeguarding privacy.

Second, by introducing a proactive strategy for managers to identify and address the stakeholder privacy depicted through virtual influencers, our framework enables a manager to understand the role of each stakeholder in safeguarding consumer data. For example, a sponsor will determine the nature and level of information that should be collected from consumers, ensuring better privacy control. Cybercriminals can generate fake information that can have a detrimental impact on the image of brands and organizations. Further, deep fake-based deceptions result in a loss of brand equity, stakeholder credibility, and negative financial implications [START_REF] Mustak | Deepfakes: Deceptions, mitigations, and opportunities[END_REF]. It is paramount to address the responsibility of virtual influencers demarcating the boundary between the owners/creators and sponsors.

Many countries, including the United States and India, have already regulated this practice to include stringent disclosure requirements on the legal responsibility of avatars [START_REF] Franke | Consumers' Responses to Virtual Influencers as Advertising Endorsers: Novel and Effective or Uncanny and Deceiving[END_REF].

Third, the paper recommends the development of a matrix structure integrating sponsors and owners/creators of virtual influencers. The proposed structure will provide a cohesive platform to integrate the digital and marketing teams into a single unit to manage privacy. The specialized unit should design proactive measures, big data, digital security, and tracking systems to recognize and block cybercriminals and fake profiles. Creators have used Lil Miquela to raise awareness for various causes that can be controversial due to radical political, social, and sexual considerations [START_REF] Arsenyan | Almost human? A comparative case study on the social media presence of virtual influencers[END_REF]. For instance, Calvin Klein issued an apology following accusations that their campaign featuring model Bella Hadid and virtual influencer Lil Miquela was employing provocative sexual appeals [START_REF] Jarvis | Calvin Klein apologises for 'queerbaiting' advert showing kiss between Bella Hadid and fictional woman Lil Miquela[END_REF].

Limitations and future research agenda

This article provides a framework with a rich research agenda (see Table 1).  How do virtual influencers' appearance and anthropomorphic traits influence the multi-privacy paradox? First, building on existing literature with an exploratory qualitative design, this paper proposes four initial conceptual propositions subject to refinement and empirical testing. Our framework identifies data vulnerability, cybercrime, and fake profiles as key sources of consumers' unbalanced privacy perceptions. Future studies could experimentally assess these factors' impact and how they may affect privacy perceptions. Testing boundary conditions like consumer characteristics (e.g. metaverse experience, tech anxiety) could enrich the framework. As this research is conceptual and exploratory, findings have limited generalizability. Examining unbalanced privacy across customer segments could enable tailored privacy strategies.

Second, different cultures, values, and regulations lead to varied privacy attitudes across countries (Oghaz et al., 2020). We encourage examining our propositions and the multi-privacy paradox impact in diverse country settings. Despite regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and APP, businesses often need more data protection. Enforcing these regulations remains rare owing to limited consumer data ownership awareness, underscoring the need for reform. Our framework addresses data management power unbalances as a foundation for improving policies and corporate accountability, ultimately restoring consumer data rights.

Third, virtual influencers are used across sectors [START_REF] Barrera | Marketing in the Metaverse: Conceptual understanding, framework, and research agenda[END_REF]. We invite scholars to explore our framework's impacts across fashion, entertainment, etc. Influencers' features (human vs. robot, gender, emotions) should also be investigated further as marketing research stresses understanding anthropomorphic characteristics digitally [START_REF] Blut | Understanding anthropomorphism in service provision: a meta-analysis of physical robots, chatbots, and other AI[END_REF].

Conclusion

Amid the rise of virtual influencers within the metaverse, our research highlights the significant potential for engagement and entertainment while accentuating the pressing data privacy concerns that arise. Our study presents a comprehensive conceptual framework that illuminates the multifaceted privacy risks inherent in this evolving landscape. By shedding light on the intricate privacy panorama encompassing virtual influencers, we provide practical insights valuable to organizations and stakeholders. Our study offers a timely and relevant contribution to the dynamic realm of the metaverse, where virtual influencers assume a growing role. By comprehensively exploring the multi-privacy paradox, we aim to stimulate further research and discussions regarding the ethical ramifications of interactions with virtual influencers. As technology continues shaping our digital interactions, protecting collective privacy remains crucial, empowering individuals to engage securely with virtual influencers.

Figure

  Figure 1. Multi-privacy paradox

Figure 3 .

 3 Figure 3. Application of multi-privacy paradox



  How do data vulnerability, cybercrimes, and the creation of fake profiles differently impact consumers' unbalanced privacy perceptions? What are the psychological mechanisms leading to unbalanced privacy? How do consumer characteristics (e.g., consumer experience of the metaverse, technology anxiety) act as boundary conditions that reduce or favor the perception of privacy risks? Consumers cultural differences Can culture shape the multi-privacy paradox? What is the influence of data privacy regulation in the multi-How can virtual influencers from different sectors and industries enhance or reduce the multi-privacy paradox?

Table 1 .

 1 Multi-privacy paradox: An agenda for future research


Mildred Lawson

Nathalie Saudo-Welby

George Moore'

"Not fitted for marriage" "

eponymous Celibates novella of 1895, 1 is a woman of many flaws, but as a literary character, she has one great quality: she is very much alive to us. One reason is that the 1895 Celibates version of the story grew out of his romance with the American heiress Pearl Craigie, 2 but there is also something about Mildred which makes us feel that we have already met her somewhere. She is familiar to readers of nineteenth century fiction. Moore being a great admirer and reader of Balzac, she owes something to Sylvie and Denis Rogron, the destructive siblings in Pierrette (1840). 3 She is reminiscent of the failed artist in Ella Hepworth Dixon's Story of a Modern Woman (1894). More crucially, she resembles the heroine of a pessimistic novel with a purpose reflecting the difficulty for a modern woman to adjust to her time. The caricature is so cruel that there seems to be a purpose behind it. Yet, once we have overcome our emotional response to the heroine's repulsive personality, our reaction to the story has much in common with that of Moore's contemporaries: doubt and wonder. 'Mildred Lawson' reads like a novella with a purpose without a purpose.

This difficulty was noted by reviewers as a puzzle. A critic of the New-York Times wrote in 1895:

Here are three queer stories by the author of Esther Waters, the reading of which suggests a number of questions. For instance: Why did the publishers accept these things, which are certainly not nice, and seem to have no serious purpose whatever? Esther Waters was not a pleasing book, but was at least a truthful one, which seemed to have a sound moral purpose underlying it.

It was useful, too, in defining a position for Mr Moore in the literary world. He was exhibited clearly as a stern moralist using the naturalistic novel as his medium of expression. But now Mr Moore seems to have abandoned that position, and he leaves us in a worse state of doubt in regard to his forte than we were before. […] in Celibates we do not know how to take him. It cannot be that these are further essays in the naturalistic style, and that Mr Moore really believes he is telling the honest truth about humanity. If he does, we fear he has made a sad mistake,

In terms of style, it is difficult to tell which school inspired Moore. Some critics, such as that of the Bookman, argued that the tale was a true clinical study in the style of Zola or the Goncourts, 'a book that tortures every sensitive mind, that wounds, and keeps the wounds open for scrutiny'. [START_REF]Celibates[END_REF] Yet, if Moore is indeed 'do [ing] the Zola act' 6 as a critic put it in Harper's Weekly, he has done so in an unobtrusive way. Moore's contemporaries were quick to find in Mildred's coldness and in her fierce belief in chastity a form of frigidity denoting mental degeneracy. Mildred constantly analyses herself and is particularly conscious of what she calls her instincts but clinical terms are almost entirely absent from the novel. The novel takes place in bohemian Paris and many conversations deal with art but it lacks the mannerisms which would justify the word 'aestheticism.' Even though the storyline and themes of 'Mildred Lawson' closely correspond to the formulae of problem novels related to the Marriage Question, no critic called Mildred a 'New Woman' and neither these words nor their companions (womanly, feminine) appear in the story. Many New Woman novels were wordy and almost all of them served a didactic purpose which was fully exposed by the narrator or the heroine in the course of the novel. Moore's story contains such didactic discourse but it is not consistent with the heroine's behaviour. Such ambiguities make the interpretation of the novel problematic; they result in contradictions which constitute a form of subversion of the genre of New Woman novels.

As the novel begins, Mildred is in open rebellion against her brother Harold and her fiancé Alfred. In their conversations the two men appear conservative and life in Sutton appears so dreary that the reader is led to side with Mildred against them. But at the end of the book, Mildred openly admits to herself that her mentor, Mrs Fargus, a recognizable type in such fiction, 'had said enough to make her understand that it were possible to rebel against marriage; and that in proclaiming antipathy to marriage, she would win admiration, and would in a measure distinguish herself.' (ML 103) The meaning of her speech was thus determined not so much by the message it conveyed as by its effect.

Mildred's initial claim was that she would 'like to see more of [her] own sex' (ML 11), have a female companion and go to Girton because women are more stimulating, but when given the choice of a studio in Paris, she chooses the men's studio (despite the fact that the fees are higher) because, as she puts it, 'there are cleverer pupils there than in the ladies' studio.' (ML 31) She desires independence and freedom but she cannot think of going to Paris without a chaperon. She will never overcome her psychological dependence on the admiration and gaze of others. Her financial independence is illusory, for she never manages to complete a single painting, let alone sell one. She is unwilling to marry because 'At Oxford they say that marriage is not the only mission for womenthat is to say, for some women' (ML 8). She is also reluctant to give herself, another feature familiar to readers of New Woman fiction. But while Evadne in Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins (1893) did so by instinct to protect herself and her children, Mildred's choice of celibacy and chastity seems to reside in a mental obstacle, as in the case of Thomas Hardy's Sue Bridehead (Jude the Obscure, 1895), with whom she has much in common. Yet, when she looks at herself in the mirror, she perceives herself as 'a dainty morsel', something to be consumed and admired by men [START_REF]examine Jessamine in Emma Frances Brooke's A Superfluous Woman observes that 'She never thought of herself save as a dainty piece of flesh which some great man would buy[END_REF] (ML 40). The image we see in the mirror is that of a woman who is anything but a feminist.

Finally, New Woman novels generally ended badly, either betraying their anti-feminist stance by proving the absurdity of the New Woman's cause, or proving that the social conditions were not yet ready for her advent and the realization of her convictions. Lyndall, the great heroine of the first New Woman novel, The Story of an African Farm (1883), dies in misery as a result of her disastrous theories. We have to wait till 1909 for H. G. Wells's Ann Veronica (1909) to live happily hereafteralbeit in the shelter of a patriarchal marriage. The heartless pessimism of Moore's inconclusive ending, leaving Mildred seemingly reconciled to marriage and suburban life, can best be appreciated in the light of Balzac's commentary on his own ending of Pierrette in the preface to his novel: 'si Rogron se marie, il ne faut pas prendre son mariage comme un dénouement, il reste Rogron, il n'a pas longtemps à vivre, le mariage le tue.' 8 By leaving Mildred's marriage in suspense, Moore erases the distinction between marriage and celibacy. Moore's novel thus demands that we identify its literary conventions and appreciate their subversion.

In his introduction to the fifth volume of the collected stories, Mark Llewellyn writes of 'Henrietta Marr' (In Single Strictness, 1922), the final version of 'Mildred Lawson' later reproduced in Celibate Lives (1927):

Like sketches of a moment rather than minute accounts of a life, Moore's narratives are not really about condemnation or criticism of the individual under the reader's eye; rather, they are about understanding and interpretation. Moore is the teller of the tale but not to the extent that he prescribes our reading of it. [START_REF] Moore | Henrietta Marr[END_REF] This judgement also applies to a reading of 'Mildred Lawson'. The unobtrusive narrator shows the characters in conversations and situations for the reader to judge and the story mainly consists of a mixture of dialogues and internal monologue, with descriptive narratorial passages leading to free indirect style. The reader is never given an omniscient view of the characters. We are not told what to think of them. This effect can be found to a greater degree in 'Henrietta Marr', because the suppression of all the inverted commas in the dialogues has the effect of blurring the points of view further. This narrative organization is extremely close to the stream of consciousness technique, which allows us to feel the contradictions inherent to Mildred's character. How reliable is Mildred? How can we get to know a character who is a liar, who does not know herself and who constantly plays a part? The subtlety of Mildred's characterization results from her dual nature: she is a liar; she has difficulty accounting what she experiences mentally and physically; she achieves more in thoughts and speech than in deeds.

Mildred is the archetypal liar, 10 a fault not often found in New Women, who are known for their outspokenness and sincerity. Herminia, Grant Allen's The Woman Who Did (1895), was a great believer in 'the truth'. [START_REF]I believe in the truth[END_REF] Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm (1883) contains an embedded story telling the great allegory of the Bird of Truth. Far from worshipping the truth, Mildred breaks all her promises and engagements, says one thing and does another. Our appreciation of Mildred is made more complex by the fact that she acts her part and never expresses what she thinks, even to herself. When the unobtrusive narrator draws back and moves into free indirect representation of thought, we find that her lack of sincerity even extends to herself. Mildred is often lying to herself. When she cries, she stages a sort of melodrama for nobody to see, and is thus made to lie to the reader:

Then the desire to weep overcame her, and, so as to be able to surrender herself wholly to grief and tears, she took off her gown and released herself of her stays. She put on an old wrapper and threw herself upon the floor. She threw herself over to this side and that; when she got to her feet her pocket-handkerchief was soaked, and she stood perplexed, and a little ashamed of this display of grief. For she was quite conscious of its seeming artificiality. Yet it was all quite real to her, only not quite as real as she would have had it be. She had wept for herself and not for him! But no, it was not so; she had wept for them both. And she had taken off her gown, not because she was afraid of spoiling it, no such thought had crossed her brain; she did not care if she spoilt her dress or fifty dresses like it; no, it was not on account of the dress, but because she felt that she could find a fuller expression of grief in a loose wrapper than in a tight dress. That was the truth, she could not help things if they did seem a little incongruous. It was not her fault; she was quite sincere, though her grief to a third person might seem a little artificial. (ML 110) 12 By the time Mildred has completed her demonstration the reader is wholly unconvinced by it, and in fact the more she defends herself, the guiltier she sounds. From a linguistic perspective, we are dealing with a case where quantity undermines quality. In this long development, the third person omniscient narration gradually shifts into free indirect speech, thus creating a realistic representation of bad faith at work. The argument which Mildred opposes ('not because she was afraid of spoiling it') is more fully developed than the others, and she further betrays herself in her use of the verb 'seem'. Her mind is building up a dialogue with those who observe her. Yet, Mildred being alone, to whom could things 'seem a little incongruous'? Far from finding her attitude incongruous, readers are confirmed in their initial impression that Mildred is playing a part, and thinks of herself as being constantly under the gaze of others. When she meets her brother in Paris, she realizes that the situation 'offer[s] an excellent opportunity for acting' and she 'determin [es] to act up to it', she 'compos[es] her most demure air' (ML 90) and 'improvis[es] the words of her part' (ML 91), and the narrator comments that 'Mildred was only happy when she could get outside herself.' (ML 90) Mildred's taste for poses and acting becomes an opportunity for George Moore to valorize performance.

Our interest in Mildred's narrow life and worries is sustained by the subtle ways her mind works, and in particular by her intuition that her thoughts are not truly hers. We are often given to see that Mildred truly perceives herself as she would like others to see her. When Moore writes: 'But in the morning she was, as she put it herself, better able to see things from a man's point of view' (ML 54), the irony lies in the fact that Mildred has always excelled at seeing herself with a man's eye, but she does not perceive this as a limitation.

Sometimes, thoughts come to her mind unwanted and fail to convince her. [START_REF]But I don't know why every base thought and calculation enter my head[END_REF] Mildred's experience of dissociation extends to the domain of language. Mildred is not only prey to strange thoughts, she carries in her mind words which belong to the world of New Woman novels, which she inhabits. Such is the case with the word 'instinct', a key-word of biosocial discourse. 15 Instincts drive women away from unfit men and towards worthy lovers. Instincts tell a woman to give herself against common prejudice. In Esther Waters, the word 'instinct' was used by the narrative voice, commenting on Esther from a naturalist perspective. In 'Mildred Lawson' almost all thirteen occurences of the word can be attributed to Mildred, who conveniently formulates her motives in terms of instincts which speak to her, [START_REF]An imperative instinct was drawing her back to England, but another instinct equally strong said[END_REF] as appears clearly in the following extract: 'The desire to see her dead lover was an instinct.' (ML 56) Significantly, desire comes first and instinct comes second. The voice which Mildred mistakes for her instinct is sometimes that of respectability, sometimes mere excuses like in the last page: 'Why cannot I live in natural instinct?' (ML 114) Mildred uses the tautological expression 'natural instinct' because the instincts which have governed her life were nothing but half-formulated desires.

The expression 'not fitted for marriage' is another interesting case of the subversion of the expected use of language in the context of New Woman novels. References to fitness are part of the eugenic message frequently found in such fiction. The expression 'not fitted for marriage' was part of the rhetoric of the New Women who evaluated the potential of their mates (Menie Muriel Dowie's 1895 Gallia), or were judged unwomanly, and almost inapt to bear children (Arabella Kenealy's 1893 Dr Janet of Harley Street), but one would hardly expect a New Woman to pass upon herself a diagnosis of unfitness, and yet this is exactly what Mildred does: 'I don't think I shall marry at all. There are other things besides marriage.... I'm not fitted for marriage. I'm not strong. I don't think I could have children. It would kill me.' (ML 14) Such reluctance to marry and have children recalls Sylvie Rogron's panic turned into ridicule in Balzac's Pierrette. Halfway through the novel, Sylvie and her brother both become bent on marrying out of financial interest. Sylvie, who is in her fortysecond year, grows hesitant because she is afraid of dying in childbirth and arranges for a friend of hers called Céleste to see a doctor for her, unaware that Céleste is herself intent on marrying her own brother so that her children can inherit their fortune. Hidden in her friend's private bathroom, she overhears Céleste's manipulative discourse and M. Martener's frightening verdict:

-"(…) Un accouchement heureux est alors un de ces miracles que Dieu se permet, mais rarement.

-Et pourquoi?" dit Céleste Habert. Le médecin répondit par une description pathologique effrayante; il expliqua comment l'élasticité donnée par la nature dans la jeunesse aux muscles, aux os, n'existait plus à un certain âge, surtout chez les femmes que leur profession a rendu sédentaires pendant longtemps, comme Mlle Rogron. (…)

Enfin il résulta de cet entretien, clairement, sérieusement, scientifiquement et raisonnablement, que, passé quarante ans, une fille vertueuse ne devait pas trop se marier. Quand M. Martener fut parti, Mlle Céleste Habert trouva Mlle Rogron verte et jaune, les pupilles dilatées, enfin dans un état effrayant. [START_REF]In such a case, a happy delivery is a miracle, which God sometimes allows, although rarely.' 'And why ?' asked Céleste Habert. The doctor then drew a frightening pathological picture, explaining how the flexibility that nature gives to muscles and bones no longer exists at a mature age, especially in women whose occupation has made them sedentary, like Mlle Rogron. (…) What came out of this interview, in a clear, scientific and reasonable sense, was that a virgin over forty ought not[END_REF] The nastiness of Balzac's characters (with the sole exception of Pierrette and her lover) is only matched by Balzac's own cruelty towards them. Unwilling to write a novel as long as 'that wonderful poem called Clarissa Harlowe', 18 Balzac explains that he has chosen not to depict in every detail the vile calculations of his characters, preferring to insert a commentary on the baseness of the human heart or an ironical sign of authorial presence into his text (like in 'pas trop se marier'). What grows into a small comical episode in Balzac consists in a series of disjointed allusions in Moore's story: Mildred Lawson is thus depicted less cruelly, and in a style which renders a modern woman's mixed feelings towards pregnancy.

Literature provides ample evidence that the story of a fictional heroine's life generally concluded with her marriage and that motherhood was almost sure to interfere with Mildred's creative aims. In her study of Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, and Mona Caird, Ann Heilmann writes:

None of the three writers discussed in this study create successful female artist figures who are also mothers. (…) Only in dreams and in allegory, such as 'The Child's Day' (the 'Prelude' to From Man to Man), can Schreiner conjure up the vision of a woman who is both a nurturing mother and a productive artist. [START_REF] Heilmann | New Woman Stategies: Sarah Grand[END_REF] Mildred's reasons are thus perfectly valid, but she moves so fast from one to the other in a disjointed way that she throws doubt on her sincerity. By the time we reach the end of the novel we have learnt to take whatever she says with a distance. As we discover that she excels at self-absorption rather than self-realization, we come to have doubts about her feminist leanings.

Moore's subversion of the traditional ingredients in New Woman fiction is so systematic that the reader may wonder whether 'Mildred Lawson' is not a parody. But, as Mary Pierse has shown, Moore depicted a New Woman with 'much credit and humanity' in the character of Mrs Fargus. [START_REF]Mrs Fargus who is painted in the clichéd garb, coiffure, spectacles and attitude of the ridiculed blue stocking, emerges with much credit and humanity in Moore's tale. (…) This New Woman has the much-mocked external appearance of the stereotypical intellectual woman but her actions reflect the solid virtues that were so lauded by the Victorian age. There is no heralding or trumpeting of this concurrent assault by George Moore on facile labels, gender stereotypes, and class assumptions, but the bases for such attitudes are successfully undermined and the reader is deftly[END_REF] Besides, the energy invested into the process is less playful than aesthetic, less satirical than experimental. Moore has produced a purposeless book pervaded with aimlessness, failure and repetition. Mildred is incapable of producing anything approaching a work of art and she is not a source of inspiration for men but a 'disintegrating influence' (ML 80). George Du Maurier's novel Trilby (1894), which had been a tremendous success the year before 'Mildred Lawson' was written, is also a novel of celibate lives set in bohemian Paris, whose heroine proves a disintegrating influence on the life of the young genius Little Billy. The omniscient narrator is a merry man who constantly injects good humour and energy into the tale. In Moore's novella, the narrative voice is neutral, it neither participates in the characters' failures, in contradistinction to Flaubert, nor distances itself from them, in contradistinction to Balzac. The main positive life-giving element lies in the aestheticization of Mildred's life.

One of the reasons for the dissociation in Mildred's consciousness is that her existence is largely aestheticized. The product of influences, some of which are described as mesmeric, Mildred strives to 'exist beautifully'. [START_REF]Maudle's idea of an ideal profession in George Du Maurier's caricature of Oscar Wilde for[END_REF] Her sensitivity has been warped by artistic works and various influences, some of which are described as mesmeric. [START_REF]Her liking for Morton was quite real; there were even moments when she thought that she would end by marrying. But mysterious occult influences which she could neither explain nor control were drawing her away from him[END_REF] Her aesthetic experiences contribute to the construction of her own persona rather than to the creation of an artistic work. Mildred poses as a New Woman. As a female dandy, her identity is the product of influences, a strategic word of aesthetic discourse which is recurrent in the novella. Some passages read like a downtoned version of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), another great novel of celibate lives. Like Dorian, Mildred has built for herself a mask of purity, which she contemplates narcissistically, and like Mildred, Dorian grows 'more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of [her] own soul.' [START_REF] Wilde | The Picture of Dorian Gray[END_REF] She feels 'quite ill' in a dirty dress. [START_REF]I don't see why, because you're an artist, you should be a slattern. I don't feel comfortable in a dirty dress. It makes me feel quite ill[END_REF] She observes that 'her faults at all times had especially interested her', she is 'delighted' when she discovers that she is 'a cruel woman' (ML 103) and 'thrill[s] at the thought that she could make a man so unhappy' (ML 104). Her former lover's grief becomes an intense source of fascination, like Dorian with Sybil: 'His grief was wonderful to witness, and involuntary remarks had escaped her admirably designed to draw it forth, to exhibit it' (ML 104). 'Lying sleepless in his own delicately-scented chamber', Dorian 'would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish'. 25 Mildred 'wished to feel, she longed for the long ache of regret which she read of in books, she yearned for tears. Tears were a divine solace, grief was beautiful.' She 'woo[es] sorrow' (ML 47). Like the hero of the fascinating yellow book given by Lord Henry to Dorian, she 'lov[es] for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue (…).' [START_REF] Wilde | The Picture[END_REF] In the words of Norbert Kohl writing about the dandy, she engages in a 'narcissistic flirtation with [her] own depravity'. [START_REF] Kohl | The Works of a Conformist Rebel[END_REF] Mildred, who has been taught by Ralph that the 'artificiality [of trees] is their beauty' (ML 25), becomes a perfect artificial type. Her extreme sophistication in dress, her obsession with her appearance, her relentless efforts to fascinate can easily be attributed to her femininity, but they are also the characteristics of the dandy, many of which she shares: selfish, solipsistic, useless, ornamental and witty, creative yet unproductive, independent and uncommitted, never saying a right thing and never doing a wrong thing, busy with filling up her leisure-time, lacking sincerity and constantly playing a part for men to see. Many critics have noted that the best description of Mildred is the one which she gives herself: 'the soul of a courtesan in the body of a virgin' (ML 47). Significantly, this description is inspired by a painting by Greuze [START_REF] Moore | Ann Heilmann suggests that the painting could be The Broken Pitcher or The Broken Jug. 29 Wilde, The Picture[END_REF] which she has been trying to copy without success. In the Wildean style she has copied art and, failing in art, she has put art into her life.

While avoiding all kinds of mannerism, Moore's style emulates the aesthetic manner. His use of flower motifs around this 'unnatural' woman is evocative and reminiscent of the way Wilde uses them in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). The first lines of Moore's novel smack strongly of that novel where conversation, art, dress and the fascination theme also have pride of place:

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. 29 The tall double stocks were breathing heavily in the dark garden; the delicate sweetness of the syringa moved as if on tip-toe towards the windows; but it was the aching smell of lilies that kept Mildred awake. (ML 7)

In the original text of 'Mildred Lawson' published in the Lady's Pictorial in 1888, Mildred already relished tending flowers, 'mourn[ing] for the beautiful Gloire de Dijon that had only lived a day' 30 and the syringa was an aesthetic motif developed at strategic moments in Mildred's life. 31 In her study of dandyism, Ellen Moers makes an interesting connection between the New Woman and the dandy in the section devoted to the decadence of dandyism. Masculinized, the New Woman took on the attributes and cultivated the powers of the dandy: independence, distance, amorality, sophistication and creativeness. Ellen Moers obviously regrets the fact that the New Woman put an end to the dandy's long career and was never able to replace him. The part played by the New Woman is not an honourable one:

A figure which had survived so much succumbed in the fin de siècle to the domination of the New Womannot because she fought against him (she had her own uses for the dandified male) but because she pushed him from the centre of the stage. Without centrality the dandy could only retreat into nostalgia; he languished in the midst of his revival. [START_REF] Moers | The Dandy: Brummell to Beerbohm[END_REF] Moers observes that novels started filling up with the counterpart of the New Woman: the kept man, very willing to marry in order to be protected by woman. [START_REF]For the amusement and gratification of the New Woman, the best-selling novelists created a new kind of masculine foil which combined the aesthete, the decadent and the dandy. The resulting species was disturbingly rather than gracefully effeminate. More playthings than heroes, these gentlemen are actually "kept men[END_REF] This could explain what is probably the most unlikely element in 'Mildred Lawson': the ease with which men, who, as everybody knows, need to be reminded of marriage by their lovers, are willing to marry unpleasant Mildred (Alfred, Ralph and Morton, are all ready to make her their wife or mistress, as she wishes). [START_REF]Henrietta Marr', Mildred brings up that argument herself: 'Besides, you don't want to marry me. If I am as false as you sayyour falsehood being my truth and vise versayou cannot want to marry me. Think what the marriage would be of such an ill-assorted[END_REF] Moore put a lot of efforts into the characterization of Mildred but his male characters are more loosely sketched and not very distinctive, which appears in the close names he gave them (Ralph, Harold and Alfred all sound like variations on a single male figure). Interestingly, such indistinctiveness is instructive: Moore's men are creative, good, passionate and incredibly willing to get married. At the time when Moore was writing, the New Woman figure already constituted a well-defined part which could be impersonated at will [START_REF]Sidney Grundy's play The New Woman exploited the potential of the New Woman figure for drama and comedy[END_REF] and dissociated from her sociopolitical commitments. By espousing the cause of the New Woman, Mildred escapes her middle-class fate and builds up an alternative personality for herself. Moore's interest in drama can once more be felt. His aesthetic achievement lies in bringing out the thematic and structural resemblances between the artificiality of the artistic world he depicts, the duplicity in Mildred's mental life, and the cause of the so-called unnatural woman. Mildred thus remains a complex figure, who, despite her tragic condition, often elicits a smile.

  She then calls herself 'the victim of a wandering thought.' (ML 46) Her inner dialogue reflects a sense of estrangement: 'Few women have inspired such a love as that… If it were known -if'she pushed the thought angrily aside as one might a piece of furniture over which one has stumbled in the dark. It was shocking that thoughts should come uncalled for, and such thoughts! the very opposite of what she really felt. (ML 47) Mildred's consciousness is spatialized, turned into a dark room where she cannot find her way, and where thoughts come wandering. The narrative structure of the novel brings us close to a heroine who does not know herself and has to explore herself. In those conditions, what kind of insight into Mildred can we gain? Mildred finally appears unreliable but this judgment is not imposed upon us, in contradistinction to Balzac's descriptions of the Rogrons. 14 Since Mildred is never judged for what she really is, the part of us which is familiar with unwanted thoughts can even sympathize with the uncongenial Mildred. Her selfishness, cruelty and coldness are damning features, but she is redeemed by her awareness of those faults, and by her realization that her feelings are at odds with what she should be experiencing. Either Mildred is physically sad but pursued by untimely selfish thoughts, or she is mentally sad but her body gives no sign of it. This contradictory state can be observed in the carefully slow passage which follows: 'How sad it all was. But she did feel sorry for him, she really was sorry, though she wasn't overcome with grief.' (ML 47) The use of 'but' and of the superfluous 'did' implies that her sadness is not real. The reinforcing sentence which follows not only confirms that her sorrow is not truly felt, it also suggests that she is fully aware of it. The last clause shows that her thoughts are at odds with her feelings. Her mind is full of sorrow, but her body cannot experience it.