Investigating how immersive virtual reality and active navigation mediate the experience of virtual concerts

We conducted an experiment to examine how virtual reality (VR) and active navigation interact to improve audience experience in virtual concerts. To manipulate the medium, the participants were presented with concert-related audiovisual stimuli via a head-mounted VR device or a computer. To manipulate the participants’ access to different perspectives (navigation mode), they were allowed to actively switch, or were passively guided, between the audience’s perspective and the performer’s perspective. According to the results, VR and active navigation induced a higher sense of presence (feeling of being somewhere else) than did computer and passive navigation, and thus, they increased the audience’s state of flow and gave them higher degrees of satisfaction and concert-attending intention. VR and active navigation also increased the participants’ role identification (feeling of being someone else), which again gave them higher degrees of satisfaction and concert-attending intention. This research contributes to the literature supporting VR’s enhancement of concert experiences and further highlights the important relationship between action, perception, and experience satisfaction.