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Updated: Jul 16, 2025

Virtual Reality Experiments with Physiological Measures
Published on: August 29, 2018
The effects of virtual nature exposure on pro-environmental behaviour
Tingting Yu1, Xiaojuan Hao1, Florian Lange2
1Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Abstract:
Exposure to (virtual) natural environments may encourage people to care about environmental protection and to engage in pro-environmental behaviour. Previous research on this effect produced inconsistent results, suggesting that it may depend on the type of nature and behaviour under study. In the present study (N = 266), we investigated nature exposure effects on effortful pro-environmental behaviour in an online experiment. After watching pictures of either intact or destroyed natural environments, participants could exert voluntary extra efforts to generate real donations to an environmental organisation. In comparison to the intact nature condition, participants exerted significantly more effort for environmental protection after being exposed to pictures of destroyed nature. No clear differences were observed between the nature exposure conditions and a no-picture control condition. These findings illustrate the complexity of nature exposure effects and suggest that different types of nature exposure may differentially affect people's pro-environmental behaviour.
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