Impact on the Quality of Interpersonal Relationships by Proximity using the Ventriloquism Effect in a Virtual Environment

Abstract

This paper discusses more effective interaction between a user immersed in a virtual environment (VE) and a salesperson avatar. Utilizing the superiority of visual information over auditory information, we implemented an interpersonal situation in which only a sound image invaded the user’s personal space (PS) using a virtual salesperson avatar. We investigated the impressions that 16 participants had of the avatar. The experimental results showed that when the sound image invaded the PS, the correlation coefficient between the distance from the user to the sound image normalized by the interpersonal distance of each participant and the rapport for service quality was -0.24 (p<0.05). This indicates that in the range of the ventriloquism effect, the avatar’s sound image intruding into the PS and approaching the user leads to an improvement in rapport. The application of the technique proposed in this paper, in which the position of the visual image and the sound image diverge, is expected to improve the value cocreation of the interpersonal service experience in VEs such as virtual stores, which have been increasing in recent years.