Evaluation of Virtual Reality Cultural Heritage Experience at Guilin Museum, China: A Conceptual Paper

Abstract

Integrating Virtual Reality (VR) technology into cultural heritage presents unprecedented opportunities for enhancing museum experiences, specifically through immersive and interactive digital presentations (Theodoropoulos & Antoniou, 2022). Although virtual reality technology has the potential to enhance the experience of cultural heritage, according to previous research, it is not difficult to find that existing museum VR applications often lack an immersive experience, and many experiencers' immersion is interrupted during the experience, highlighting the urgent need for a VR application evaluation framework. In addition, most of the research is from the technology perspective, ignoring the users' experience needs. Therefore, the purpose of this conceptual paper is to present a conceptual framework that theoretically justifies the creation of a virtual reality evaluation. This conceptual paper begins by reviewing relevant research on VR in the cultural heritage field and methods and scales for measuring immersion. It suggests the possibility of utilizing grounded theory to uncover potential factors. Subsequently, this conceptual paper summarizes previous research and theoretical gaps. A conceptual framework for establishing a robust evaluation of virtual reality applications is proposed as a two-stage mixed research method (Exploratory Sequential Mixed Method Design) (Berman, 2017). This concept paper illustrates the details and rationalization of the conceptual framework so that it can be further investigated theoretically or empirically in the future. This concept paper contributes to developing an evaluation of VR cultural heritage applications. At the same time, it theoretically enhances the understanding of digital presentation and preservation of cultural heritage.