Work

User Experience in Virtual Self-Disclosure: Appraising Natural, Urban, and Artificial VR Environments

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) offers new opportunities for delivering psychologically meaningful conversations in digitally mediated settings. This study examined how environmental designs influence user experience during emotionally relevant self-disclosure. Fifty university students completed a within-subjects experiment in which they engaged in a structured positive and negative self-disclosure task across four immersive environments (seaside, garden, urban, and sci-fi). After each interaction, participants rated six experiential dimensions relevant to therapeutic communication: comfort, calmness, pleasantness, focus, privacy, and perceived overall suitability for psychological therapy. Repeated-measures analyses showed that nature-themed environments were rated more positively than non-nature environments across all dimensions. Although the seaside and garden environments did not differ in overall composite ratings, the seaside setting was most frequently preferred for comfort, calmness, and pleasantness in participants’ final rankings. These findings demonstrate that virtual environment design meaningfully shapes users’ emotional and interpersonal experience in VR, highlighting the value of nature-based environments for VR counselling systems and digital mental-health applications.

Source: Applied Sciences

DOI: 10.3390/app16010033

Authors: Shane L. Rogers, Tasha Canes, Alexis Pallister

Institution: Edith Cowan University

Language: English

Topic: Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts

Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896