Avatar Appearance and Behavior of Potential Harassers Affect Users' Perceptions and Response Strategies in Social Virtual Reality (VR): A Mixed-Methods Study

TL;DR

This study explores how avatar appearance influences user perceptions of sexual harassment in social VR and identifies user response strategies, offering insights for platform design and regulation to address harassment issues.

Contribution

It investigates the moderating effect of avatar appearance on harassment perception and uncovers user response strategies, providing novel insights for VR platform regulation.

Findings

Avatar appearance significantly affects harassment perception.

Users adopt diverse response strategies to harassment.

Insights inform platform regulation and design improvements.

Abstract

Sexual harassment has been recognized as a significant social issue. In recent years, the emergence of harassment in social virtual reality (VR) has become an important and urgent research topic. We employed a mixed-methods approach by conducting online surveys with VR users (N = 166) and semi-structured interviews with social VR users (N = 18) to investigate how users perceive sexual harassment in social VR, focusing on the influence of avatar appearance. Moreover, we derived users' response strategies to sexual harassment and gained insights on platform regulation. This study contributes to the research on sexual harassment in social VR by examining the moderating effect of avatar appearance on user perception of sexual harassment and uncovering the underlying reasons behind response strategies. Moreover, it presents novel prospects and challenges in platform design and regulation domains.