The impact of immersive 360° video on environmental awareness and attitude toward climate change: the moderating role of cybersickness

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of immersive 360° video in strengthening environmental awareness and attitudes toward climate change while taking cybersickness into account as a moderating factor. It also aims to investigate whether an immersive 360° video increases environmental awareness and attitude toward climate change more than a non-immersive video, integrating cybersickness as a moderator. Design/methodology/approach A laboratory experiment was conducted with 120 students. Data were collected at two times (before and after exposure to 360° immersive video) and compared with a control condition (non-immersive video). Findings Results show that environmental awareness was significantly increased in the immersive 360° video condition but not in the control condition (non-immersive video). Also, results show no significant differences for attitude toward climate change before and after exposure to 360° video (immersive vs non-immersive). The results of the moderate mediation analyses show that a significant indirect effect of video type (immersive vs non-immersive) on attitude toward climate change via environmental awareness was only found for participants reporting low and average levels of cybersickness. The results also show that environmental awareness positively influences attitude toward climate change and that the level of cybersickness moderates this relationship. Research limitations/implications This experiment is based on a single stimulus – the melting of the Aletsch glacier – whereas the use of multiple stimuli would be ideal. The participants are exclusively students, which limits the generalizability of the results to the population as a whole. Future research with a larger and more diverse sample is imperative to broaden the scope of the present study. The effect of virtual reality was examined in a specific context, namely, Tunisia, whereas the perception of climate change risks can vary considerably from one country to another. It would therefore be interesting to conduct further cross-cultural studies to corroborate the present results. Another limitation lies in the use of explicit measures of environmental attitudes, but these alone may not be sufficient to assess the effectiveness of immersive virtual reality in changing attitudes. It is, therefore, important to use both explicit and implicit measures of attitudes in future research. Originality/value This study seeks to understand the nature of the relationship between immersive VR and environmental awareness and between VR and Tunisians’ attitudes to climate change. The moderating role of cybersickness in this relationship is also studied.