Appraising Virtual Technologies’ Impact on Older Citizens’ Mental Health—A Comparative between 360° Video and Virtual Reality

Lucas Kupczik (), William Farrelly and Shane Wilson
Additional contact information
Lucas Kupczik: Department of Computing, Atlantic Technological University Donegal, Letterkenny Campus, Port Road, F92 FC93 Letterkenny, Ireland
William Farrelly: Department of Computing, Atlantic Technological University Donegal, Letterkenny Campus, Port Road, F92 FC93 Letterkenny, Ireland
Shane Wilson: Department of Computing, Atlantic Technological University Donegal, Letterkenny Campus, Port Road, F92 FC93 Letterkenny, Ireland

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 18, 1-21

Abstract: Aging populations across the world are facing a number of challenges in the context of health and healthcare. These challenges are driven by the aging process and the illnesses associated with aging. Healthcare for older people has become a point of concern with most health organizations, and this is particularly the case with palliative care. In this instance, the movement of the patient may be restricted to a room with no or limited access to the outdoors. This research focuses on the active integration of immersive technologies with healthcare. By addressing the problem of providing patients with the experience of being present in an outdoors space, the associated psychological and physiological benefits can be identified. In this mixed methods research paper, the impact of a crossover study to discern technology preferences in relation to immersive technologies among a sample of older people is reported. In addition, the study highlights factors that contribute to a meaningful immersive experience that can improve psychological and physiological wellbeing. The study identifies that there are two significant categorical aspects that contribute to such immersive experiences, technological aspects (including, for example, the weight of headsets, visual impairment, pixelation, and gamification) and emotive aspects (for example, joy, anger, and fear). The study suggests that older people prefer immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environments rather than 360 video experiences. This can be attributed to the greater flexibility in the provision of interactivity in virtual reality systems.

Keywords: virtual reality; 360° videos; immersive technology; older people; healthcare; psychological health; nature; outdoors; digital health; sensor technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11250/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/18/11250/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:18:p:11250-:d:909078

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().