Self-Avatars in Virtual Reality: A Study Protocol for Investigating the Impact of the Deliberateness of Choice and the Context-Match

Andrea Bartl, Sungchul Jung, Peter Kullmann, Stephan Wenninger, Jascha Achenbach, Erik Wolf, Christian Schell, Robert W. Lindeman, Mario Botsch, Marc Erich Latoschik

Abstract: The illusion of virtual body ownership (VBO) plays a critical role in virtual reality (VR). VR applications provide a broad design space which includes contextual aspects of the virtual surroundings as well as user-driven deliberate choices of their appearance in VR potentially influencing VBO and other well-known effects of VR. We propose a protocol for an experiment to investigate the influence of deliberateness and context-match on VBO and presence. In a first study, we found significant interactions with the environment. Based on our results we derive recommendations for future experiments.