Enhancing audience engagement through immersive 360-degree videos: An experimental study

Abstract

The use of 360-degree videos to engage audiences in diverse contexts is increasing. While 360-degree videos have the potential to create new value in enhancing audiences’ viewing experiences, they often decrease audience engagement by causing motion sickness in an immersive environment. Despite increasing scholarly and practical attention to the effect of 360-videos on audience engagement, the question of how to enhance it through immersive 360-degree videos remains unanswered. Therefore, this study empirically examined the effects of different display types and viewport dynamics on audience engagement using data collected from 60 subjects during a laboratory experiment. The results show that an audience’s viewing experience in an immersive environment is influenced by the joint effects of display types and viewport dynamics. By explaining the mechanisms by which audiences are engaged with 360-degree videos, this study contributes to resolving previous inconsistent findings regarding the effect of immersive technology on audience engagement.