At your fingertips: Do augmented reality gestures reveal product-related emotion?

Advances in immersive technologies give online retailers an opportunity to integrate augmented reality (AR) experiences for their customers. With AR, product presentations shift from static images to interactive virtual experiences. This interaction allows online retailers to identify product-related emotions through affective computing. In mobile AR, customers use touch gestures for virtual interaction. Drawing from theories of immersive media and affective computing, we hypothesize that touch movements and pressure in AR-based mobile applications relate to positive emotions during product interactions. We conducted an observational study in a controlled laboratory setting to test our hypotheses and found that these variables can predict emotional responses. To ensure robustness, we applied explainable AI methods, including Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP), to interpret the contribution of each touch gesture. We found that specific gestures, including the number of pan movements, the average time for pinch movements, touch pressure, and the number of rotate movements, strongly predict positive emotional responses, highlighting the importance of haptic engagement in immersive shopping experiences. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications. We explain how touch behavior can predict product-related emotions and demonstrate how online retailers can implement emotion analytics in AR shopping applications. © 2026 Elsevier B.V. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.