Virtual Food Court: A VR environment to Assess People's Food Choices

Abstract

Immersive virtual reality environments can provide users with realistic experiences of worlds that do not exist or would be hard to reach. The ability to manipulate these environments and influence experiences can be used to understand decision making under different conditions. In this study we explore how VR can be used to understand more about people's food choices. We explore how policy-based interventions such as the "sugar tax" and "nutrition labelling" to promote healthier food choices could be tested. Only limited experimental studies have been conducted about such choices due to the difficulty of trying such interventions in large retail settings. The objectives of the study were to assess how accurately the Virtual Food Court (VFC), represents a real food court. The study (27 participants) had two study conditions; a control with regular food-court prices, and an experimental condition with taxes on food and beverages. Results revealed that participants were able to imagine doing their real-life food purchases in the VFC indicating that it is a good research tool for assessing people's food choices.