Affectively engaged: affect and arousal routes of entertainment virtual reality

Presence has been discussed in the literature as an essential, defining aspect of virtual environments, but the emotional aspects of the virtual experience have been generally ignored and conceptualized within the limits of online or web-based environments. The purpose of the paper is to reexamine the concept of presence in terms of people's emotional engagement with 3D-based virtual environments. Three main theoretical statements are discussed: a) VR environments have the potential of becoming the next, fully "transparent", ultimate mass medium; b) VR environments are associated with presence, which is characterized by high levels of arousals and intensive affect; and c) High levels of arousal and intensive affect are associated with lower levels of ad awareness, which means that peripheral cues will play a more important role in the persuasive process. The finding could be extremely useful for considering virtual environments as a new possible advertising medium, in that users are not easily aware of the presence of advertising messages "embedded" in the virtual environment.