The application of virtual reality in empathy establishment: Foresee the future

The establishment of empathy is the premise and foundation for diverse innovative proposals and problem solutions. Virtual reality has provided a full range of depth and breadth for the establishment of empathy in many different types of fields due to its immersive, interactive, and imaginative characteristics. In this study, bibliometric analysis and VOSviewer software are used to cluster and visualize relevant 190 articles from the Web of Science core collection. The essay proposes a positioning of how to apply virtual reality on empathy based on two dimensions, from internal world to external world, and from business innovation to social innovation, by integrating each two of them, four application methods are summarized, which are meaning shaping, value creation, individual satisfaction, and self-realization. What’s more, using the bibliometric analysis result as a basis, the application landscape of virtual reality technology for establishing empathy has been constructed, including individual level, society level, and nature level, which reveals the existing and coming possibilities of using VR technology on building empathy in different fields. Last but not least, the paper has discussed the impact of virtual reality for empathy-building from five aspects, economy, politics, culture, society, and ecology. The efforts of this study reveal the VR tendency and have important reference significance for promoting the application of virtual reality technology in creating empathy and innovation in different fields.