Experimental Economics in Virtual Reality

Why Conduct VR Experiments?

1. Add naturalistic context to your experimental setting.
2. Conduct dangerous or impossible experiments.
3. Analyze tracking data to gain novel behavioral insights.

In immersive virtual environments, you have full control over your experimental setting. You may use virtual humans as confederates whose performance remain constant over experimental sessions. You can conduct co-presence experiments with real human social interaction.

To learn more, read our paper!

• Gürerk, Ö., Bönsch, A., Braun, L. Grund, C., Harbring, C, Kittsteiner, T., Staffeldt, A. (2014, revised version 2016). Experimental Economics in Virtual Reality, MPRA Paper No: 71409. Download MPRA_paper_71409

Please see the research page for more information.

Contact: Dr. Özgür Gürerk, University of Erfurt

personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/drgurerk/

e-Mail: guererk@uni-erfurt.de | twitter: @DrGurerk

Virtual Reality Research in Social Sciences: Links

VR Labs & People

Labs

VHIL, Stanford U, Jeremy Bailenson

http://www.event-lab.org/, Mel Slater, Mel Slater's presence blog

Oxford Internet Institute, Ralph Schroeder

http://tele-immersion.citris-uc.org/, Berkeley

Human-Technology Interaction, Eindhoven, see Virtu/e Lab

VR Lab Fontys

http://www.recveb.ucsb.edu/ update?

http://aims.muohio.edu/hive/, Miami U, they have the biggest IVE

http://informatik.uibk.ac.at/igs/, haptic interfaces

DAF lab Tilburg

VR Lab of the Max-Planck-Institute Leipzig

VR-Project on risk evaluation, Uni Bamberg

Prof. Mühlberger, Regensburg

SFB/TR 8, Bremen, Spatial Cognition, see Project A5, Virtual Realities

http://www.uni-weimar.de/de/medien/professuren/vr/

Frauenhofer IIS "Holodeck 4.0"

Frauenhofer IFF Elbe-Dom Magdeburg

Clemson

Lavreb, news collection

Smart Glasses Experience Lab, Frauenhofer FIT

WorldViz Case Studies

Allosphere, UCSB

People

Jaron Lanier

Michael Abrash, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-2dQoeqVVo

Ron Dotsch

http://nickyee.com/

http://www.ist.ucf.edu/people/gwelch/ ?

http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~ceh/, education

Prof. Frank Steinicke, HCI, Uni Hamburg

VERE Project EU

Gadgets

http://www.biopac.com/aLIAS-release

http://cyberith.com/

Microsoft HoloLens, http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7867593/microsoft-announces-windows-holographic

Intel, RealSense

Skin Conductance

MIT, Galvactivator

VR & Economics

Harrison & Rutström et al., risk: paper1, paper 2

Alessandro Innocenti, University of Siena, VR review in JBEE, August 2017

Jantsje Mol, VU Amsterdam

Virtual Worlds & Economics

Edward Castronova

Ernan Haruvy's VW page

Peter Twieg, Twieg's VW research FAQ

Economics in the Metaverse, Kevin McCabe, teaching

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/bainbridge/, Review in Science

AI and Economics

Charles Noussair on "robo sapiens" - YouTube

Misc in Tech

http://techonomy.com/

http://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality, history of VR & more

Industrie 4.0

How VR works

Object and Face Recognition

Shore, Fraunhofer IIS

FaceReader

MS Project Oxford

Radboud Faces Database

Virtual Humans

@USC

Field Journals

Presence, MIT Press, see most downloaded articles

Conferences

VR Symposium, Eindhoven, 27-28 Jan 2015

IEEE VR

Hard & Software

TEA

Virtual Reality Research in Social Sciences: Reading List

Scientific VR Research

Start with this comprehensive review which covers most of the scientific research done in VR in the past.

• Slater & Sanchez-Vives, 2016, Enhancing Our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality, Frontiers in Robotics and AI.

The following papers are on social interactions in VR, emotions in VR, and on ethical issues of doing research in VR.

• Bombari et al., 2015. Studying social interactions through immersive virtual environment technology: virtues, pitfalls, and future challenges, Frontiers in Psychology.
• Diemer et al., 2015. The impact of perception and presence on emotional reactions: a review of research in virtual reality, Frontiers in Psychology.
• Madary & Metzinger, 2016. Real Virtuality: A Code of Ethical Conduct. Recommendations for Good Scientific Practice and the Consumers of VR-Technology, Frontiers in Robotics and AI.
• Bertrand et al., 2018. Learning Empathy Through Virtual Reality: Multiple Strategies for Training Empathy-Related Abilities Using Body Ownership Illusions in Embodied Virtual Reality, Frontiers in Robotics and AI.

Other useful papers:

• Li et al., 2017. A Public Database of Immersive VR Videos with Corresponding Ratings of Arousal, Valence, and Correlations between Head Movements and Self Report Measures, Frontiers in Psychology.
• Riva et al. 2016. Transforming Experience: The Potential of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality for Enhancing Personal and Clinical Change, Frontiers in Psychiatry.
• de Borst & de Gelder, 2015. Is it the real deal? Perception of virtual characters versus humans: an affective cognitive neuroscience perspective, Frontiers in Psychology.

VR Experiments in Economics

The paper by Innocenti nicely covers the first wave of virtual experiments conducted in low-immersive virtual worlds, as well as recent virtual experiments conducted in high-immersive virtual environments, referring also to our work.

• Innocenti, 2017, Virtual Reality Experiments in Economics, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.

Harrison et al. were the first economists stating the potential of virtual experimental research, focusing on experiments in virtual worlds.

• Harrison, Haruvy & Rutström, 2011. Remarks on Virtual World and Virtual Reality Experiments, Southern Economic Journal.

Behavioral Research in Virtual Reality: Labs

Labs conducting behavioral experiments in VR:

• VHIL, Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Stanford University.
• EVENT LAB, Experimental Virtual Environments for Neuroscience and Technology, Universitat de Barcelona.
• Virtual Embodiment Lab, Cornell University.
• Behavioral Lab-HSG, University of St. Gallen.

Research Section: „Virtual Environments“

Research Topic: „The Impact of Virtual and Augmented Reality on Individuals and Society„