Using VR in conjunction with biometric sensors to assess public perception of urban biodiversity

Immersive virtual reality is increasingly used to evaluate spatial and environmental design scenarios, yet most studies rely on post-experience surveys that summarize experience retrospectively and obscure how responses unfold during exposure. This study demonstrates how integrating wearable biometric sensing with immersive virtual reality can extend spatial research by capturing temporally resolved, embodied responses to environmental variation. We conducted a controlled virtual reality experiment featuring three urban spatial typologies (residential, institutional, and urban core), each containing four sequential biodiversity treatments ranging from no to high biodiversity. Heart rate and galvanic skin response were recorded continuously and analyzed as within-subject deviations from baseline, then segmented according to spatial typology and treatment. Aggregate survey responses were used to characterize reflective post-experience perceptions of biodiversity, naturalness, inviting quality, and overall liking. Results show that physiological arousal does not scale linearly with either perceived biodiversity or stated preference: moderate biodiversity conditions often elicited elevated heart rate alongside peak liking, while high biodiversity conditions sometimes produced heightened arousal accompanied by reduced liking. An illustrative within-subject comparison demonstrates how biometric data reveal experiential inflection points that are not evident from survey responses alone. Rather than treating biometric measures as validation tools, this work positions immersive virtual reality combined with biometric sensing as an embodied response instigator that complements reflective evaluation and offers new methodological possibilities for spatial design research.