Bigger is Better: A VR Penguin Rehabilitation Simulation to Study Animal Conservation Behaviors

Humans are thought to favor conservation of large rather than small animals. However, this “size matters” bias has yet to be empirically validated. If this bias exists, traditional experimental methods cannot examine how human-animal interactions may offset this bias because public access to threatened species is limited. To address these issues, this paper presents a virtual reality (VR) simulation where users assume the role of a volunteer in-training sent to rehabilitate Antarctic penguin species caught in an ecological disaster. The objective of this simulation is to serve as a novel tool for (a) empirical testing of the “size matters” bias, (b) exploration of how human-animal interactions in VR can offset this bias, and (c) measuring conservation outcomes using VR.