Environmental policy and immersive technologies

Abstract

The level of environmental degradation caused by human activities has risen at an alarming rate. Under pressure to motivate people towards green behavior, governments rely on financial incentives, but traditional policy instruments often encounter public opposition and do not have the desired effect. Environmental policy-makers communicating about environmental issues face a challenge: people fail to recognize environmental problems because the consequences are usually temporally or physically distant from the causes. Immersive technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, offer an opportunity to bridge this gap by providing direct experiences of environmental threats in a safe environment. These virtual experiences could reduce perceived psychological distance, enhance risk perception of environmental issues, and motivate behavior change before environmental damage is caused. Also, by bringing the field in the lab, virtual environments provide the context to laboratory experiments needed for investigating human behavior. Given these arguments, immersive technologies point to a promising tool for environmental policy implementation and evaluation. This article presents an original survey covering experimental studies that were 1) conducted in virtual environments and 2) have explicit implications for environmental policies. Recommendations for policy-makers and future studies are suggested.