Impact of immersive virtual reality on environmental mental imagery, climate risk perception and attitudes towards mitigation behaviors

This paper aims to investigate the effect of immersive 360° VR video (vs. non-immersive) on environmental mental imagery, climate change risk perception and attitude towards climate change mitigation behaviors, incorporating climate skepticism as a moderator. A field experiment was conducted with 319 participants, using a between-subjects design to manipulate the level of immersion of a 360° video (immersive vs. non-immersive) illustrating the negative effects of climate change in Tunisia. The results show that immersive 360° VR video (vs. non immersive) increases significantly environmental mental imagery. They also reveal that environmental mental imagery positively influences climate change risk perception and attitude towards climate change mitigation behaviors, and that climate skepticism negatively moderates these relationships.