Presence and Flow in the Context of Virtual Reality Storytelling: What Influences Enjoyment in Virtual Environments?

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) has widely been implemented in a variety of industries, with immersive storytelling now gaining popularity in the field of journalism. In this regard, there are many important questions about which direction modern journalism should take as a whole. To test the feasibility of immersive storytelling, this study developed a cognitive experience model containing paths for presence, flow, credibility, empathy, understanding, and enjoyment. A total of 131 participants were divided into three groups and exposed to either VR, 360-degree videos, or two-dimensional (2D) videos, then asked to rate their experiences. With the exception of understanding, results showed that the VR and 360-degree videos were more highly evaluated in each path when compared with 2D videos. In this case, technical attributes did not greatly affect the study variables. However, presence played a vital role in news promotion, while flow was positively affected by presence; flow also affected other variables when combined with presence. Finally, a structural equation model was tested and the weights of the different influences on the enjoyment impact were presented. In sum, this study found that immersive storytelling improved both presence, flow, and credibility, which jointly and positively affected enjoyment. Understanding negatively affected enjoyment. Empathy had little effect on enjoyment in the model.

Introduction

Virtual reality (VR) is of increasing importance in many fields of scientific research, particularly, including psychology, sociology, and the humanities. Studies have shown that it is crucial for any VR application to help users achieve a maximum sense of presence.¹ In this regard, immersive virtual environments (IVEs) offer spaces that recreate familiar spatial and social contexts.² In recent years, many news outlets have announced or released VR opportunities, with well-known outlets such as British Broadcasting Corporation, The New York Times, and Washington Post even launching 360-degree projects. Referred to as immersive journalism, this provides viewers with first-person experiences of events, locations, and stories.³ Immersive journalism encourages users to empathize with people and events in the news.

It brings users closer to characters, enabling them to share the same space virtually and inciting them to feel their emotions or situations more strongly. Simulating certain factors can cause immersive journalism to seem real to the users.⁴ New opportunities have created new challenges for immersive journalism. How does immersive journalism affect the user experience (UX)? Are these influences positive? There are many hypotheses about the possible effects of immersive journalism, but few studies have investigated the UX for news stories in IVEs.^5,6

Research has shown that presence influences psychological outcomes in different environments, such as those related to reading, watching films, and playing games in VR.⁷ Individuals may watch 360-degree videos using VR headsets, while desktop applications offer more benefits than plain text, even when the same stories are presented.⁸ As such, presence is increasingly being explored as a mediator that increases other VR outcomes.⁹ In fact, it is widely regarded as a contributing factor for increasing both empathy and embodiment.⁴

Culture and entertainment account for large shares of existing VR applications. Applications in other areas also use gamification elements to enhance user fun and enjoyment, making them critical enhancements. As news stories are essential components of cultural life for most people, journalism plays significant roles in both culture and entertainment. This makes immersive journalism an important research topic.¹⁰

Many studies have investigated the influences of VR technologies.^11–13 However, there has been a lack of focus on the cognitive process itself. At this stage, VR applications are mainly geared toward entertainment. In this context, it is important to measure the outcome of enjoyment.¹⁴ This exploratory study aimed to fill this gap in the VR storytelling literature by empirically comparing different immersive storytelling components, with a focus on how they affect enjoyment. More specifically, this study investigated whether and how users felt the elements of presence and flow based on immersive journalism, in addition to whether presence and flow influenced the UX of enjoyment, whether presence and flow impacted other cognition-related outcomes-credibility, empathy, and understanding, and how user enjoyment could be improved.

As such, an experiment was conducted to compare the effects of VR, 360-degree videos offered through mobile devices, and two-dimensional (2D) videos among a sample of college students. In this context, participants either viewed VR with a cardboard headset, 360-degree videos on flatscreen pads, or watched traditional 2D videos. Results were then compared through a structural equation model (SEM).

Our findings provide insight into the possible psychological and theoretical mechanisms behind UX quality based on the roles of both presence and flow, including which effects contributed to enjoyment in IVEs.

Materials and Methods

Participants

The project accords with the ethical acceptability of research projects that did not involve minors, vulnerable, or persons incapable of judgment. No personal details were involved in this project. Before the experiment, participants have informed of the experiment purpose, data use. A total of 131 participants were randomly divided into three groups based on the presented storytelling medium, including cardboard VR headsets, flatscreen pads with 360-degree viewing capabilities, and 2D videos. The VR-based and 360-degree news stories were accessible through a mobile application, whereas the 2D videos were accessible through The New York Times online news site. Participants were voluntarily recruited from various departments at universities in Switzerland.

Stimuli

The experimental material presented to participants included two contemporary news stories, titled “The Displaced,” and “Under a Cracked Sky.” Both stories were ∼11 minutes long and published in various video versions from the New York Times, but the stories featured entirely different themes. “The Displaced” was designed to immerse users in the lives of three refugee children who were forced to leave their homes as a result of war. It was specifically chosen due to its critically acclaimed documentary status. Furthermore, refugees are a commonly presented news item in the context of social and political life in Europe, meaning that participants were familiar with the topic. At the same time, it pertains to issues that are likely to instill sympathy.

For example, the presented struggles were likely to cause adverse reactions and evoke empathy. In this context, emotional intensity is correlated with emotional valence, leading to other individual emotion variables and producing more pronounced responses and significant contrasts.¹⁵ In addition, several studies have already used “The Displaced” to facilitate similar comparisons while refining related theories and models.^4,16 In contrast, “Under a Cracked Sky” is part of The Antarctica Series. Two divers who researched some of the most significant and frigid waters on Earth narrated the story at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. The story features images captured mainly in the deep sea and takes viewers on a journey through its beauty, evoking more benign responses. Thus, these two videos with different content were used to reduce the effect of the theme on the variables.

Research Model and Hypotheses Development

Different models were evaluated and integrated, including the Modality-Interactivity-Agency-Navigability (MAIN Model)¹⁷ and presence and flow model.^1,2,18

The MAIN Model is concerned with the technological aspects of digital media and claims that technological affordances trigger cognitive heuristic cues, or psychological reactions, in relation to the quality and credibility of media content.^17,19 Presence and flow are related heuristics relevant to virtual storytelling. Presence is triggered when a user is experiencing in IVEs. Once triggered, the users consider the authenticity of the experience when making their evaluations.²⁰ Flow is an important factor related to the heuristic interaction, which is triggered when a medium enables users to participate with the content. Therefore, the 360-degree video may trigger presence, which is related to heuristics and allow users to feel as if they are “being there.”²¹

In addition, 360-degree video enables users to navigate the story environment. VR enables users to navigate the story environment by moving their heads in different directions, thereby providing a more natural and intuitive interaction, which is related to presence and flow. In VR and 360-degree video, where the user is watching an actual video scene, the sudden appearance of the characters and sounds can potentially incite a positive flow.

Realism is “seeing is believing.” This heuristic is triggered when the mediated presentation closely approximates physical reality and provides an experience of empathy.²² “It can give users a unique sense of empathy for people and events.” Research has demonstrated that VR can increase empathy for the characters presented in IVEs.²³ Per the MAIN Model, heightening the senses of being-there, interaction, and realism can trigger positive heuristics, which contribute to users' assessments of content credibility.¹⁷

Based on the MAIN Model, this study features different models with presence and flow as the core research objects, which have been applied and tested by researchers.^24–26

Therefore, a VR cognitive model (Fig. 1) was also built to examine the roles of presence and flow, thus enabling us to postulate the effects on enjoyment, which influences UX.

FIG. 1.

Study model and hypotheses.

Presence and flow in immersive storytelling

Presence and flow affect enjoyment, particularly when combined with credibility, empathy, and understanding. These outcomes are associated with presence and flow, but also impact enjoyment. Furthermore, this study constructed a cognitive model that can be used to develop a relevant framework. While presence and flow positively affect enjoyment, credibility, empathy, and understanding, credibility, empathy, and understanding impact enjoyment in the context of the integrated model, which can be used to examine immersive environments (i.e., the core driver of VR storytelling). Presence was measured using items taken from three previous studies,^27–30 whereas six items were used to measure flow.³¹ We developed the following hypothesis:

H1: Presence positively affects flow.

Enjoyment in immersive storytelling

Feelings of physical and mental happiness are derived from consistently used media sources, primarily in the form of entertainment.^32,33 In journalism, a competitive advantage is enhanced by understanding what audiences enjoy in terms of the preferred news contents, narrative styles, and equipment. Several models^2,34 have illustrated that presence has a positive influence on enjoyment. Users are able to enjoy a particular story if they have a strong sense of presence within the connected IVEs. This mechanism arises from arousal theory, and has been confirmed in studies on 2D news.³⁵

Although some studies have already explored enjoyment based on results from 360-degree videos and VR journalism,^9,36 none have offered a precise model for explaining the related cognitive process while discussing other influences, especially including the improvement factor known as flow. In this study, enjoyment was assessed based on an existing adjective scale.^9,37,38 We developed the following hypotheses:

H2: Presence positively affects user enjoyment in the context of immersive journalism.

H3: Flow positively affects user enjoyment in the context of immersive journalism.

Credibility in immersive storytelling

Credibility is a central influencing factor in journalism.³⁹ There are three dimensions, including credibility of the source, credibility of information, and media reputation.⁴⁰ Both the credibility of media sources and reputation are subjective audience perceptions regarding the reliability and accuracy of news media outlets.⁴¹ To reduce the number of variables, we chose The New York Times, which is well recognized by the general public and produces quality journalism. Therefore, credibility of the source and media reputation are ensured. Information credibility refers to whether the viewers believe news contents are trustworthy.

This article discusses credibility mainly in terms of direct informational trustworthiness. The news impacts audiences not only depending on how they read the contents, but also whether they trust the information.⁴² In this study, credibility was assessed using both outcomes; we also investigated the credibility of online news sources based on conventional and technical features.⁴³ “The news was objective,” “The source of the news video was sincere,” “The source of news video was reliable,” “I am knowledgeable about this topic,” “The news video was in-depth,” and “The news video was made by professional journalists,” six items were used to measure credibility. In this case, we developed the following hypotheses:

H4: Presence positively affects how users assess credibility in immersive journalism.

H5: Flow positively affects how users assess credibility in immersive journalism.

Empathy in immersive storytelling

Empathy is also an essential factor in immersive environments.^44,45 Individuals can empathize to greater extents when they understand the subjective experiences and circumstances of others.^46,47 VR storytelling stimulates empathy, thus reflecting the general effectiveness of news communication. In this contest, immersive journalism can communicate individual experiences or feelings to many users. In such an immersive environment, users may feel strongly about another person's emotions or conditions based on feelings of “being there,” or being close with those who are directly experiencing the events. When engaged through VR, empathy can also increase one's perceptions about the authenticity of IVEs. Empathy can strengthen the link between VR and physical reality, thereby resulting in greater levels of believability.⁴⁸

Indeed, empathy is also triggered by personality traits and several social factors, including reading experiences. However, constrained by experimental conditions and time, the many factors affecting individual empathy could not be controlled. Instead, this study focused on reporting the effects of VR storytelling on empathy and enjoyment in the same way that some researchers have studied empathy in reading.⁴⁹ As such, the impacts of both presence and flow on empathy directly affect how users process news from a cognitive standpoint.^8,23 We developed the following hypotheses:

H6: Presence positively affects user empathy in the context of immersive journalism.

H7: Flow positively affects user empathy in the context of immersive journalism.

Understanding in immersive storytelling

It is difficult to improve the public understanding of video news when presenting information that is not highly relevant. Research on 2D television news processing has shown that individuals often struggle to understand and remember events when they have trouble paying attention to the news.⁵⁰ Compared with 2D journalism, VR storytelling results in a greater allocation of cognitive resources. VR journalism also requires a greater degree of cognition. For example, the illusion of establishing a sensory presence through VR may require users to allocate substantial amounts of cognitive resources.⁵¹

Although these processes facilitate presence and flow, they also reduce the available cognitive resources needed for higher cognitive processes,⁵² including news comprehension. Recent research has shown that immersion negatively impacts news communication, which is achieved through presence.⁸ In this study, we assessed relevant scale items using questions originally proposed by Busselle and Bilandzic⁵³ and made some changes to suit the situation.⁵⁴ We constructed the following hypotheses:

H8: Presence negatively affects how users understand immersive journalism.

H9: Flow negatively affects how users understand immersive journalism.

A few previous studies have explored the impacts of presence on different variables.^2,29,51 However, there is a gap in the literature concerning the flow of immersive journalism. The relationships between enjoyment, presence, and flow are not always direct, as they may also be influenced by other factors. We constructed the following hypothesis:

H10: Enjoyment is influenced not only by presence and flow, but also by credibility, empathy, and understanding.

Confirmatory factor analysis

Test reliability was analyzed before conducting the experiment. A final sample was used for data processing after the pretest. The R package “semTools” was used to test convergent validity and consistency reliability of model.⁵⁵ The Cronbach's α coefficient ranged between 0.75 and 0.85 and the average variance extracted of all the items is >0.5, implying satisfactory construct reliability. The Composite reliability ranged between 0.79 and 0.86, indicating that it is considered significant⁵⁶ (Table 1). After removing items that failed the test, results indicated adequate build reliability. The majority of products had factor loadings of higher absolute values than the original model. The goodness-of-fit indices were within acceptance levels.

Table 1.

Convergent Validity and Reliability Analysis

Variables	Presence	Flow	Empathy	Understanding	Credibility	Enjoyment
Cronbach's α	0.8526	0.7545	0.8409	0.8653	0.7797	0.8279
Composite reliability	0.8574	0.8076	0.8552	0.8703	0.7886	0.8391
AVE	0.5265	0.5366	0.5549	0.571	0.5443	0.5185

AVE, average variance extracted.

Results

Randomization checks

Three conditions were related to several contextual variables in the first step of this study. None of the three conditions showed significant differences between age, gender, and previous VR experience (Table 2). These results suggested that randomization was successful.

Table 2.

Participants Profile

	2D	360-Degree	VR	Total
Gender, %
Female	45.45	55.81	50	50.42
Male	55.55	44.19	50	49.58
Age (years), %
<20	6.82	0.00	9.09	5.30
20–25	9.09	18.06	40.91	22.87
26–30	59.09	41.86	34.09	45.01
31–35	15.91	25.68	9.09	16.86
>35	9.09	13.96	6.82	9.96
VR experience, %
Never	45.45	46.51	45.45	45.80
1–5 Times	36.36	41.87	43.18	40.47
>5 Times	18.19	11.62	11.37	13.73
Total, N	44	43	44	131

2D, two-dimensional; VR, virtual reality.

Results also showed that the storytelling medium's main influence was on presence (i.e., when considering presence, flow, and credibility). In this regard, participants who watched 2D videos (M = 3.6477, SD = 2.1770) showed much weaker results for presence when compared with those who used VR (M = 6.4489, SD = 1.8627) and 360-degree videos (M = 5.0523, SD = 2.2251). Similar results were found for flow, which was higher in the VR (M = 6.9848, SD = 1.2957) and 360-degree video (M = 6.0620, SD = 1.6543) groups when compared with the 2D group (M = 4.9697, SD = 2.3981) (Table 3).

Table 3.

2D, 360-Degree Video, VR for All Outcome Variables

	2D		360-Degree		VR
	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Presence	3.6477	2.1770	5.0523	2.2251	6.4489	1.8627
Flow	4.9697	2.3981	6.0620	1.6543	6.9848	1.2957
Empathy	5.5833	2.6258	6.7674	1.9142	7.5909	1.7191
Understanding	7.1742	1.5921	7.6512	1.5135	8.5379	1.2435
Credibility	5.7159	1.6341	6.5000	1.4750	6.2841	1.4251
Enjoyment	3.8182	2.3287	5.0930	1.7223	6.9273	2.0383

2D, two-dimensional; SD, standard deviation; VR, virtual reality.

The data suggest that VR storytelling successfully induced high levels of almost all variables, except credibility. Results of credibility showed that 360-degree video and VR were higher than 2D video (M = 5.7159, SD = 1.6341), but the 360-degreevideo (M = 6.5000, SD = 1.4750) was higher than VR (M = 6.2841, SD = 1.4251). The boxplot (Fig. 2) illustrates the overall distribution and median of each variable score in the three groups, which was exported by R. A least significant difference test was used in the analysis of variance analysis. As shown in Figure 3, participants in all groups reported the most significant results for the sense of presence, flow, empathy, understanding, and enjoyment. The outcome of empathy was less than others but still showed significance.

FIG. 2.

Difference between the overall effects of 2D, 360-degree video, and VR. 2D, two-dimensional; VR, virtual reality.

FIG. 3.

Main effects of storytelling on key variables. Note: Fisher's LSD post hoc test. *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001. LSD, least significant difference.

The R package “Lavaan” was used to analyze the model. The model is a good fit to the data. Using the fitting criteria suggested⁵⁷ and considering the whole sample (N = 131), the model produced the χ²/df of 1.86, an root mean square error of approximation of 0.06, an non-normed fit index of 0.92, and a comparative fit index of 0.94. They were within the appropriate ranges, thus indicating high internal consistency. The R package “car” was used to examine the variance inflation factor to avoid the influence of collinearity. The results (presence = 1.8386; flow = 2.1923; empathy = 2.193; understanding = 1.574; credibility = 1.541) indicated no existing collinearity in this model.

General findings from testing the hypotheses

The R package “Lavaan” was used to structure the model and test regression. As shown in Figure 4, the results of hypotheses tests demonstrated that presence was positively affected with flow (H1). Presence explained 45.3 percent of the variance in flow. Furthermore, presence and flow both influenced enjoyment and showed good support (H2 and H3).

FIG. 4.

The representation of the structural model.

Regarding the news story, participants perceived that presence and flow positively contributed to credibility (H4 and H5) and empathy (H6 and H7). However, presence negatively affected understanding (H8), and flow positively affected understanding (H9), although both not strongly. Therefore, H9 was not be supported. Finally, there was strong support for H10, which proposed that presence (38.9 percent), flow (60.7 percent), and credibility (14.3 percent) would contribute to story enjoyment. However, understanding (−16.1 percent) and empathy (−6.5 percent) were negatively related to enjoyment.

Discussion

In regard to future technology developments, VR will increasingly be implemented in a variety of industries. This research is particularly meaningful for professionals who are attempting to use VR technologies in the context of journalism.

As expected, VR news storytelling resulted in higher levels of presence, flow, empathy, credibility, and enjoyment. Compared with traditional 2D videos, presence and flow were also more pronounced through VR and 360-degree videos. Although all factors were associated with presence, VR and 360-degree video performed better in this regard than 2D video. Even more significant results emerged for flow. The intensity and commonalities of these effects show that existence and flow are the fundamental values that VR and 360-degree videos offer when compared with 2D videos. This means that multimodality and interactive capabilities are offered to users in terms of IVEs perception.

Previous research has inferred that flow is independent of the quality of technical logic in IVEs, and is affected by the user's own will, emotion, and disposition.⁴ This study's experimental results confirmed the existence of a relationship with flow. As confirmed by H1, presence also had a positive effect on flow. Therefore, flow is not independent of technical quality. Rather, it is affected by existence, and influences other factors when combined with presence.

Second, this project made a theoretical contribution by proposing an SEM to verify the paths of presence and flow on empathy, credibility, understanding, and enjoyment (Fig. 4). The model explained that presence (38.9 percent) and flow (60.7 percent) played a central role in facilitating enjoyment while influencing other variables. Compared with other factors, although understanding is related to both presence and flow, it negatively impacted the model and was substantially affected by technical factors, which is somewhat supports that VR may require users to allocate cognitive resources.^58–60 In this regard, empathy also did not have a positive effect, but was weak and insignificant. On the contrary, credibility had a positive influence on enjoyment.

In general, an SEM approach was used to evaluate the integrated impacts of all variables. All paths were supported in the overall model. Combined, the linear regression component of SEM modeling between the influencing factors showed that presence and flow were the key factors affecting enjoyment. A crucial cognitive mechanism was obtained from the three sets of results: highly immersive devices influenced the users to perceive presence and flow, while technical quality directly affected the UX and largely determined the level of enjoyment; as an important factor of journalism credibility also contributed to enjoyment. Regarding VR, it is worth mentioning that there were significant differences between VR helmets and 360-degree videos.

As such, the technological quality directly affected the UX. Understanding seemed to affect enjoyment negatively. Partial support for the hypotheses that were inspired how to evaluate the SEM. Understanding is associated with having decreased cognitive resources remaining for cognitive processes. The 2D video was characterized by a low degree of information density. In the 360-degree environment, the process of achieving a full view to be able to look around in a way similar to reality may take cognitive resources. Users are not familiar with the 360-degree full view in IVEs, in which the information processing system can be overloaded. However, flow caused by the sudden appearance of characters and voices may remind the users to focus on special information, having a slight positive impact on understanding.

Some studies have suggested the existence of direct or indirect relationships between immersion, presence, and enjoyment.^61,62 The model implemented in this study verified that this relationship was complex, multidimensional, multi-influential, and involved mutual interactions. We, therefore, argue that presence affects mobility and positively impacts enjoyment. At the same time, credibility, empathy, and understanding also impacted enjoyment (H10). Furthermore, the elements of credibility, empathy, and understanding were also influenced by presence and flow from different immersions and worked together to facilitate in enjoyment.

In sum, the model used in this study established the existence of a relationship between users and technology in immersive news, thus increasing enjoyment. These factors can be used to predict and improve widespread user acceptance of VR news storytelling. Indeed, VR storytelling strongly supported a strong presence, flow, and credibility in terms of enjoyment; the apparent costs is understanding. VR storytelling has become a new service strategy in journalism and is also a useful method for creating immersive news. In this regard, VR developers and journalists are weighing and resolving the overloaded information processing and enjoyment of the VR experience from the user perspective. The most important practical finding was the effect of the immersion environment and cognitive processes on enjoyment.

Limitations

Empathy is given less weight in this model and, therefore, is not discussed much at length. However, this study's first limitation was in its measurement of empathy. This essentially depends on individual levels of empathy among participants themselves.⁶³ The lack of a baseline measurement for empathy may have caused deviations when determining how it influences other factors. The final empathy measurement result replaces this indicator. Moreover, although the sample size of this study provided enough statistical power, it lacked sufficient power for the additional analyses. This means that the possibility of false negatives exists, and the findings from these analyses should be treated with some reservation.

Future studies may apply increased sample sizes to more reliably detect potential effects. Finally, this study considered two different news stories, thus ensuring that there was no comparison for emotional intensity. Additional research on VR news storytelling should, therefore, investigate different emotional intensities and additional influencing factors. This will help refine the current model.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We thank Prof. Gerhard Lauer from University of Basel, for his comments on this research.

Authors' Contributions

Shuran Yang is mainly responsible for the manuscript conception, methodology, software production, data collection, formal analysis, original draft, writing review, and editing parts; Wenxiang Zhang is responsible for data storage and validation. This material has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist for all authors.

Funding Information

No funding was received for this article.

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