Effect of Preference for a Lecturer Disguised as an Avatar on Desire to View Lecturer’s Video

It is said to be more difficult to concentrate in online lectures than in face-to-face lectures. Working towards an increase in desire to view lecture video, in this research we changed the appearance of a lecturer using virtual avatars (of which there are four kinds: young man & woman, older man & woman) and investigated whether a lecture participant’s viewing motivation was affected by video image of a lecturer made to look like their preferred avatar. In this experiment, in which 154 participants took part, participants were asked to select lecturers (including avatars) according to the participants’ preferences regarding appearance. Then, participants were divided into a group that watched their favorite avatar and a group that watched their least favorite avatar, before viewing the lecture video. In addition to subjective evaluation indices such as degree of comprehensibility and boredom, viewing desire was also investigated through objective indices, such as the result of a short test and a record of the time at which participants felt they wanted to stop watching the lecture. As a result, in every evaluation index, the participants who viewed an avatar for which they had a high degree of preference obtained a more affirmative result than the participants who viewed an avatar for which they had a low degree of preference, implying that viewing a preferred avatar has an influence on increase in viewing desire.