Beyond the End User: A Stakeholder-Centred Mapping of XR Authentication Research

The rapid growth of Extended Reality (XR) technologies has intensified the need for authentication mechanisms that are secure, usable, and responsive to the contextual and organizational complexities of immersive environments. Although existing research often focuses on technical performance and end-user usability, it rarely accounts for the broader ecosystem in which XR authentication mechanisms are designed, deployed, and regulated. This paper presents a first systematic exploration into how XR authentication research engages with key stakeholder types whose requirements and constraints shape the viability and adoption of user authentication mechanisms. We adopt a mixed-method approach comprising expert interviews to identify stakeholder types, a systematic mapping of 59 publications to assess their representation in the literature, and the development of a formal stakeholder model to capture their roles, interactions, and relationships, offering a structured foundation for aligning user authentication design with multi-stakeholder requirements and objectives, contributing to the development of more inclusive, deployable, and context-aware XR security solutions.