Leveraging Immersive Virtual Environments for Occupant Well-Being Analysis

Many studies have emphasized the link between the built environment and occupant wellbeing. However, it is not fully understood which aspects of the built environment impact which metrics of well-being, and further investigation is warranted. In-person laboratory experiments have provided significant insights, yet they are resource intensive. Immersive virtual environments offer a promising alternative method of conducting studies in a more cost- and time-effective manner while allowing for controlled manipulations of the variables of interest. In this study, we develop an immersive virtual environment (IVE) framework to investigate the impact of different built features on psychological, physiological, and behavioral well-being outcomes. Our framework includes multimodal data collection through a virtual reality (VR) headset, physiological sensing devices, recordings, and integrated in-VR questionnaires. To evaluate the effectiveness of the IVE framework, we conduct a pilot study (N = 20) modeled after a previously conducted study in a real environment. We hypothesize that the well-being measures will be sensitive to the manipulations to the built features that participants experience in the IVE. The preliminary validation of the proposed framework lays a foundation for further investigation on relations between the built environment and occupant well-being leveraging IVEs.