EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The effects of Virtual Reality (VR) on charitable giving: The role of empathy, guilt, responsibility, and social exclusion

Maria Kandaurova and Lee, Seung Hwan (Mark)

Journal of Business Research, 2019, vol. 100, issue C, 571-580

Abstract: As Virtual Reality (VR) continues to have an increased presence in the consumer marketplace, charitable and non-profit organizations are looking to VR to stimulate charitable giving (monetary or volunteering). The objective of this research is to investigate the effects of VR on empathy, guilt, responsibility, and donation of time and money in the social marketing context. Supported by the media richness theory (MRT) and the social presence theory (SPT), the results of three experimental studies suggest that content viewed on a VR platform, when compared against a traditional two-dimensional video media platform (VM), increases empathy, increases responsibility, and instigates higher intention to donate money and volunteer time towards a social cause. For socially excluded individuals, VR enhances the level of guilt and social responsibility, ultimately leading to a higher intention to volunteer. Although, this did not manifest for monetary donations.

Keywords: Virtual reality; Empathy; Guilt; Social responsibility; Social exclusion; Volunteering; Charitable giving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318305083
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:100:y:2019:i:c:p:571-580

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.10.027

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:100:y:2019:i:c:p:571-580