The effectiveness of using virtual reality to enhance safety education: A meta-analysis

Virtual reality (VR) enables the low-cost simulation of hazardous situations and has been used widely in safety education. This meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of VR use in this context in terms of students’ learning outcomes (motivation, presence, safety behaviour and safety knowledge). Thirty-six articles published between 2008 and 2023 were included. The overall effect size for VR use in safety education was medium (g = 0.53). Significant positive effects on motivation, presence, safety behaviour and safety knowledge were observed, supporting the effectiveness of VR in safety education. Primary moderating effects associated with the effectiveness of VR use included age, learning application type, treatment duration, pre-training, feedback timing and feedback level. Based on the results, we make suggestions regarding the impacts of instructional principles and hardware limitations on VR-based instruction.