Virtual technologies in supporting sustainable consumption : From a single-sensory stimulus to a multi-sensory experience

Virtual technologies will change the way we consume in the digital environment in the future. Such technologies can provide consumers with a multi-sensory experience in contrast to the single-sensory stimulus in the conventional online environment. As human senses play a key role in consumption choices, we argue that virtual technologies provide greater opportunities to influence consumer decisions than the present digital environment. Consequently, we suggest that virtual technologies can potentially be used to nudge consumers towards sustainable consumption. We discuss technology-assisted sensory marketing, present the cognitive and emotive aspects of virtual reality, and propose applications of virtual reality technologies to encourage sustainable consumption. Our opinion paper concludes that virtual technologies are likely to change many aspects of human life and can have significant positive effects on the environment and climate change.© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).This work has been supported by KAUTE Foundation under Grant No. 20190003 and No. 20200531; OP Ryhmän Tutkimussäätiö ounder Grant No. 20200040, Academy of Finland under Grant No. 311346, Academy of Finland SRC CULT Programme under Grant No. 327241 (Digiconsumers) and Academy of Finland Flagship Programme under Grant No. 337653 (Forest-Human-MachineInterplay (UNITE)).fi=vertaisarvioimaton|en=nonPeerReviewed

The Remapping of Peripersonal Space in a Real but Not in a Virtual Environment

One of the most surprising features of our brain is the fact that it is extremely plastic. Among the various plastic processes supported by our brain, there is the neural representation of the space surrounding our body, the peripersonal space (PPS). The effects of real-world tool use on the PPS are well known in cognitive neuroscience, but little is still known whether similar mechanisms also govern virtual tool use. To this purpose, the present study investigated the plasticity of the PPS before and after a real (Experiment 1) or virtual motor training with a tool (Experiment 2). The results show the expansion of the PPS only following real-world tool use but not virtual use, highlighting how the two types of training potentially rely on different processes. This study enriches the current state of the art on the plasticity of PPS in real and virtual environments. We discuss our data with respect to the relevance for the development of effective immersive environment for trainings, learning and rehabilitation