The issue
The main challenge of the 21st century is to reduce greenhouse gas emission. The adoption of pro-environmental behaviours contributes to tackling climate change. Most of the traditional informational campaigns aimed at changing people’s habits are conducted through print and video messages, providing information about environmental problems.
A research entitled “Immersive virtual reality helps to promote pro-environmental norms, attitudes and behavioural strategies”, conducted by Emmanuelle Kleinlogel, researcher and lecturer at the time at HEC Lausanne, Prof. Marianne Schmid Mast, HEC Lausanne and co-authors, highlights the effectiveness of using virtual reality to promote better green behaviours and disseminate messages in a more active and effective way.
In the research, more than 200 participants were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. In two conditions (immersive ones), participants received energy-saving instructions from an avatar in a virtual flat. In one of the situations, the participants’ doppelgänger delivered the instructions. In the other, an unknown avatar did it. In the two other conditions (traditional ones), participants received the same instructions through a print or a video.
Results showed that receiving pro-environmental knowledge in immersive virtual reality (IVR) led to greater energy saving attitudes and behaviours compared with receiving the same information via more traditional means.
Why it’s important
Considering the potential of IVR and its advantages as an impactful and fun way to promote pro-environmental attitudes at optimized cost, the use of immersive virtual reality could be applied to green campaigns from governmental and pro-environmental organisations.
What our professor has to say
The authors of the paper believe the main difference between the traditional and IVR conditions is that participants felt as though they were in another world where they had the opportunity to see the impact of specific behaviours. In this virtual world, they were more agents than in reality. In traditional conditions, they were more passive by reading or watching a video.
«We think that the immersion and being present in the relevant environment while obtaining energy-saving information made the difference», says Emmanuelle Kleinlogel. «Importantly, the behavioural effect we observed was limited to strategies directly addressed in the intervention, such that people who have learned green behaviour gestures via VR will only apply what has been taught. That means you need to give a clear explanation if you want to observe a change in the behaviour. Also, our tests show that receiving instructions from ones’ doppelgänger did not bring better results».
Conclusion
Given the evolving democratisation of virtual reality tools, developing IVR-based campaigns might be the next step to effectively promote sustainability. Firstly, it offers a large degree of freedom in regards to designing intervention settings. Then, this technology has become cost-effective and accessible, hence offering new opportunities for conducting campaigns on a large scale.
Photo credits: © Dmitry Marchenko – Dreamstime.com
