Living Harmoniously Through Virtual Reality

Abstract

Many people prefer to stay close to the nature and enjoy its beauty to boost their psychological well-being. It is also common among college students whose lives are very likely full of stress due to the academic pressure, high expectations, and developmental tasks-related problems as someone who is in a transition between adolescent and adult, and other possible factors. Recently, there has been a development of technology called virtual reality which is a simulated experience that gives users an immersive feel of a virtual world. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of using virtual reality by presenting videos of natural scenery on college student’s psychological well-being. Two experimental studies using controlgroup design were conducted. Each experiment measured the impact on one variable, and thus each used measurement that matched with each aim. There were 40 students in total. Data were analyzed using the Wilcoxon test followed by the Mann–Whitney test. The result demonstrated that the presentation of natural scenery through virtual reality could increase positive effect although it does not have a significant impact on students’ psychological well-being. Therefore, it provides evidence of the positive impact of living harmoniously with the nature, even if it is through an artificial scenery.
 Keywords: virtual reality, nature relaxation, positive effect, psychological well-being, student