• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.77-90
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• 2019

In this study, we investigated which message provider is effective in a virtual reality (VR) environment for individuals with different needs with regard to affect (need for affect [NFA]) and cognition (need for cognition [NFC]). According to Haddock et al (2008), individuals with high NFA were more influenced to change their behavior by the emotional aspects of a message, whereas individuals with high NFC were more influenced by the cognitive aspects of the same message. We hypothesized that individual differences in needs could affect not only receipt of the message but also the acceptability of the message provider. For example, someone with high NFA might accept messages more easily from an acquaintance than from experts. In the VR environment, the appearance of the message provider could be manipulated in a way that makes him or her more familiar to the person receiving the message. Accordingly, in order to promote the effectiveness of message providers in a VR environment according to the individual difference in needs, we measured the level of the preference and self-efficacy according to needs (NFA or NFC), type of message provider (expert, significant other, or other), and VR device (text or VR). Contrary to what we expected, the results showed that there was no matching effect between the needs and the message provider. However, we found that level of preference and self-efficacy were significantly high when a VR device was worn only by participants with high NFA. This result suggests that a VR environment is more suitable for providing health advice to people with high NFA. In addition, the novelty of this study is that we tried to find the tailored message provider on health advice in VR environment and it is in the early stage of the research.