ESPLORARE IL METAVERSO COME STRUMENTO PER LA SOSTENIB ILITÀ ATTRAVERSO L’EVOCAZIONE DI EMOZIONI

Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as a rapidly expanding field in the realm of immersive technologies, garnering increasing attention for its potential to overturn the retail industry. This experimental thesis aims to investigate how the use of virtual reality, by inducing the emotion of awe, can stimulate prosocial and sustainable behaviour within the retail context. The emotion of awe happens to be the perfect joint between sustainability, virtual reality and retail industry as it has been proved it has the potential to influence decision-making, consumer behaviour and it has been identified as a powerful catalyst for social cooperation and a sense of connection with others and the natural environment. Through a controlled experiment, this research will explore how VR can be employed to create experiences that elicit awe and how such experiences may encourage consumers to make sustainable choices. Experiment will include VR simulations presenting opposing scenarios to investigate users’ attention to sustainability and any effect of awe on it. Data will be collected through a questionnaire and then analysed. This study aims to guiding future Metaverse’ designers to implement prosocial experiences.