The role of visual and auditory factors in privacy perception through building openings

Abstract This study investigates the applicability of virtual environments (VR) in evaluating residential privacy perception, particularly in relation to auditory and visual stimuli. Given the increasing reliance on VR for architectural simulations, it is crucial to determine whether privacy evaluations in VR align with those in real-world settings. The study addresses three primary research questions: (1) Can VR accurately reproduce privacy evaluations observed in real environments? (2) How do visual and auditory stimuli interact to influence privacy perception? (3) To what extent do contextual factors, such as individual attributes and environmental conditions, affect these perceptions? To explore these questions, a comparative experiment was conducted in both real and VR environments, examining the psychological relationships between visibility, audibility, and privacy perception. Results indicate strong correlations between real and VR conditions in high-level privacy parameters, but discrepancies in lower-level parameters such as brightness, loudness, and annoyance. Moreover, individual attributes, including noise sensitivity, influenced auditory privacy perception differently across environments. These findings highlight both the potential and limitations of VR in privacy assessment and suggest that while VR can approximate real-world experiences, further refinement is needed to account for contextual and sensory interactions.