Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) has been widely applied in medical health areas and the entertainment and tourism industries, in which elderly people are a primary target. However, most studies on VR have focused on how people respond to this new technology and its effects on younger generations. Our study explored the differences in VR experience and acceptance between elderly adults and college students. A mixed method approach including both experiments and in-depth interviews was applied in this study. Our results show that elderly adults reported a higher level of telepresence and stronger emotional responses than young adults in VR viewing regardless of the VR device. The ways in which elderly people processed and evaluated VR content and devices were different from those of young people. Elderly people reported more positive attitudes toward the video they watched than young people, but this did not necessarily lead to more positive attitudes toward the viewing experience.
Highlights
For the elderly participants, perceived telepresence did not necessarily lead to more positive attitudes toward the viewing experience, telepresence and viewing experience were both positively related to video preference
The overall descriptions of telepresence by the student group seemed to be not as strong as those of the elderly group, which was consistent with what we found in the quantitative analyses that revealed that the elderly group reported a higher level of telepresence in the Virtual reality (VR) experience than the student group
It is undeniable that young people are a key audience and major users of VR, but since VR has been widely applied in the medical health area and tourism industry in recent years (Syed-Abdul et al, 2019; Lee and Park, 2020), elderly people could become the main target
Summary
Virtual reality (VR) technology has been applied in various fields, such as news (La Peña et al, 2010), brand marketing and advertising (Coyle and Thorson, 2001; Klein, 2003; Hopkins et al, 2004; Fiore et al, 2005), tourism promotion (Guttentag, 2010; Huang et al, 2013), games and entertainment (Faiola et al, 2013), education (Roussou, 2004) and medical health (Bush, 2008; Garrett et al, 2014; Amin et al, 2017; Hsieh and Lee, 2018). VR has become a powerful and popular tool for creating immersive experiences for brand marketing and advertising (Shen et al, 2019). Marriott Hotels uses VR to promote Hawaii honeymoon experiences, in which visitors
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