I’m Reese Muntean.
I am a PhD student at Simon Fraser University.Today on behalf of my co-authors and our collaborators,
I will be presenting our work on communicating sustainable consumption and production in 360 video.
Research at the intersection of technology and sustainability has been increasing across disciplines
as scholars, researchers, designers, and artists grapple with pressing environmental
issues and new technologies.
Some work seeks to persuade users towards more environmental behaviors,
raise awareness of problems, or to make technology more sustainable in itself.
Virtual reality is one such technology that is being used to address social issues.
Promoting empathy through VR is an increasingly explored and questioned research topic.
While VR research is often focused on a viewer’s feelings towards people embodied in the virtual experience,
less work has explored how VR and immersive environments might impact a
viewer’s impression of the situation around them and particularly complex environmental
issues like sustainability that might be part of that situation.
In this work, we introduce SCP in 360°: Sustainable Consumption and Production in 360 Degrees,
a series of six 360° videos produced for the United Nations One Planet network aiming
to make sustainable consumption and production more engaging, relatable, and understandable
to a wider audience.
In this presentation, I will introduce the videos and report on the visitor study that
explored whether the videos might help viewers feel for, or better understand sustainability.
In contrast to research on empathy in VR, our study suggests that 360° video supports
participants in feeling compassion towards the situations viewed and understanding the
context and complexity of sustainability solutions.
Given the time limit of this presentation, I’m just going to show you a 2D trailer
of the videos so you have a better understanding of what these videos are.
It is not possible to be sustainable in development if we don't understand that
sustainability is the essence of life.
It is important to lead sustainable lifestyles, because resources are not endless.
The economy is certainly moving right now, in a good way,
and most people benefit from the economic change.
But the other good change is a change in lifestyle, a change in the way of thinking.
The main thing for me, going into a consumer project, it's helping them realize that
it's the small decisions that can actually make a change.
I believe that through WOWZULU we are preserving Indigenous knowledge.
It's not just a public issue.
It's not just a private issue.
It's something you have to do together.
You can see the full 360 video series in the Demos, and read more about the background,
the context, the production process, and the filming techniques in the paper.
SCP in 360° debuted at the UN Headquarters in New York City as part of the One Planet
network’s exhibit at the 2018 High-level Political Forum on sustainable development.
The exhibit drew a diverse mix of over 3,300 visitors ranging from ministry officials to
employees and contractors in various UN agencies to public tour groups.
During the course of the exhibit, researchers conducted a study to explore the following questions:
Do viewers care more about sustainability after watching one of the 360° videos?
Do viewers better understand some of the complexity of sustainability after watching one of the
360° videos?
And if so, in what ways did 360° video enable this?
Participants were recruited from people who visited the exhibit, watched at least one
of the videos to the end, and were at least 19 years of age.
Participants were asked to fill out a short questionnaire with demographic information,
as well as their familiarity with sustainability and overall impressions of the experience.
The questionnaire was then followed by a five- to ten-minute semi-structured interview with
a researcher in the exhibit space.
A total of 43 participants were interviewed over the course of the nine-day exhibit.
Participants’ familiarity with environmental sustainability ranged from having no knowledge
to professional level expertise.
Along with the novelty factor impacting reported attention level, the sense of being in the
place and being with the people in the video impacted participants to either pay more attention
or also report some level of distraction.
Participants were asked for a piece of information that they learned while watching the video,
and in most instances they gave an accurate account of some aspect of the video.
Yet interestingly, some did not feel they learned any specifics or facts.
For some, they described a feeling about the situation or that they gained a greater understanding
of the situation as a whole rather than specific knowledge.
We wanted to support viewers in feeling as though they were with the people involved
in these projects, in their spaces and in their communities.
So rather than eliciting empathy by having the viewer take the perspective or a person,
we wanted to elicit compassion through a sense of connection to the people in the video.
And while participants noted that they didn’t feel particularly strongly towards, or connected
to the individuals in the videos, they did comment on the impact made by being with people
in their environments and going about their daily lives.
Twenty participants discussed their perceived connection to the environment and setting
and how that made them better understand certain aspects of the sustainability issue covered in the video.
Participants mentioned specific instances and issues that they learned about through
the 360° environment that might not have the same impact if they were presented in
traditional film or photographic formats.
Participants working in areas related to sustainability such as in governments and NGOs commented
on the value of 360° videos to better see what policies and implementation looked like
in their particular environments.
Through our interviews and data analysis, we notice a number of factors that impacted
participants’ views, attitude, and understanding of sustainability.
Perhaps one of the strongest results of this study is the indication that even subtle feelings
of presence and compassion can have an impact.
Research into empathy in VR often looks at impressive experiences in which people take
the perspective of a person in a more interactive environment or explores more emotionally charged
situations.
But as we saw in our study, affecting people may not require heavily interactive elements,
perspective-taking, or intense emotional content.
We found that our approach to using immersive 360° video filmed in a documentary style
lends itself well to communicating an overall feeling or broader context rather than specifics
when it comes to sustainability.
The immersive visuals fostered a sense of presence which allowed for additional information
and understanding about the locations and environments that the participants saw in
the video.
Yet even with the inclusion of the informational voiceover and text overlays, participants
described a greater understanding of the context and situation rather than specific facts.
We view this as an opportunity to explore rather than a limitation.
We see potential benefits of immersive 360° videos in caring about and understanding the
context of others as well as having a better overall understanding of situations rather
than learning specific facts.
When it comes to issues like sustainability, facts do not necessarily lead to
behavior change.
Behavior change is not within the scope of our study, but we were able to achieve
at least somewhat stronger connection and understanding that some researchers and theorists
suggest can be the first steps towards behavioral change.
That was quite a trimmed down version of this work.
Please check out the full paper, and thanks so much!