Sammanfattning
The present study investigates whether Virtual Reality (VR) can make us more willing to donate. Through a head-mounted display, VR lets the user experience a virtual environment that emulates reality. Increasingly, UNICEF has started to use this technology in fundraisings. They claim that donations have increased since they started showing the VR-movie “Clouds over Sidra», which portray conditions in a refugee camp. In order to test this assertion experimentally, we conducted an empirical study with 100 Norwegian students (21 males) in a 2x2 factorial between-group design. Participants saw either “Clouds over Sidra» or an emotionally neutral movie, in either 2D or VR. Participants then stated how much they wanted to donate to the refugee cause. Participants who saw “Clouds over Sidra» in VR wished to donate significantly more than participants in the other three groups.