Planning participants’ preferential differences under immersive virtual reality and conventional representations: An experiment of street renewal

Abstract

Immersive virtual reality is a promising technology for planning participation. The paper contributes to the literature by comparing the latest virtual reality technology using head-mounted display with conventional graphic representation (pictures of rendered three-dimensional environments in this case) in terms of the effects on the participants’ preferences for the plans and their underlying decision mechanisms. Using a stated choice experiment based on a real-world project of street renewal, we collected choice data from 48 university students from non-design majors. We found significant quantitative but limited qualitative differences between the aggregate preferences under virtual reality and conventional graphic representation, and some generally unappealing features under conventional graphic representation were more favored under virtual reality. Results of the discrete choice modeling showed the individual decision mechanisms became more homogeneous under virtual reality. Virtual reality had stronger impacts on the female participants than the male participants. The females had more aggregate preference reversals, larger preference differences, and stronger changes in the decision mechanism. But the mechanisms of the two genders converged under virtual reality. The findings can be used to design better participatory processes with virtual reality and conventional graphic representation properly applied according to their capabilities.