UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF CROWD AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR IN AN IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

Crowd simulations have been a part of crowd research since the 1980s. This document focuses on understanding how study participants interact and perceive a virtual crowd in an immersive virtual environment. Specifically, avoidance proximity variations (i.e., low, medium, and high avoidance proximity [defined as avoidance radius]) were explored when assigned to crowd agents impacted participants’ interaction with the virtual crowd. During the study, participants were instructed to walk in a virtual environment. At the same time, a virtual crowd was scripted to move toward participants’ starting position following a straight path. During the participants’ walking task, movement data was collected (i.e., trajectory length and completion time) and immediately after each experimental condition, participants were asked to self-report their experience (i.e., presence, co-presence, behavioral independence, crowd realism, crowd interaction realism, perceived politeness, and emotional reactivity). Based on the collected data, it was found that when participants were exposed to the high avoidance proximity condition, they: 1) followed longer paths, 2) spent more time reaching the target goal, 3) rated the virtual crowd less polite, 4) rated the virtual crowd and their interaction with the virtual crowd less realistic, 5) rated the behavior independence of the virtual crowd lower, 6) self-reported higher emotional reactivity, and 7) positive correlations were found between trajectory length and behavioral independence, trajectory length and crowd interaction realism, and completion time and perceived politeness. Suggestions for further research on human-virtual crowd interaction are also discussed.