Eyes on VR: Unpacking the Causal Chain Between Exposure, Reception, and Retention for Emotional Billboard Messages

The causal chain from message exposure to reception to effects is widely accepted as the basic explanatory model for communication and message effects. However, the chain’s links were often studied in isolation, leaving measurement gaps that compromise the ecological validity and practical utility of experimental research. Here, we introduce a VR-based paradigm that encompasses a realistic message reception context, that is, a simulated car ride on a highway flanked by billboards. We varied emotional salience as the core message factor as well as contextual distractions. VR-integrated eye trackers were used to capture participants’ incidental and self-determined message exposure dependent on their actual gaze behavior. Consistent with our predictions, results show that (1) exposure gates all subsequent effects, (2) distraction impacts the likelihood of exposure, and (3) both the manipulation of emotional content and distraction affect retention. This comprehensive research ecosystem for assaying the exposure–reception–retention chain can be broadly applied to a variety of message reception contexts.