Post by Marzieh Ghanbari

🌟 📰 I’m excited to share a milestone. Our pilot study, as part of my PhD project, has been published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports, exploring a key question: to what extent can Virtual Reality (VR) capture how we experience urban environments while walking? To do this, we compared real and virtual walks using both self-reported and physiological responses. We found: ✅ Real environments still evoke stronger positive affective responses, but VR captures the same overall patterns of how people respond to different environments. ✅ Walkable, greener streets consistently elicit more positive affective responses than car-dominated ones, across both environments. This matters because it shifts how we can use VR in urban planning and design. While VR does not fully replicate real-world experience, it can reliably capture how environmental factors shape people’s perceptions and stress responses. In practice, this opens up real opportunities: testing design scenarios, comparing street configurations, and evaluating interventions before implementation, in a controlled and evidence-based way. You can access the article here👉https://lnkd.in/eSaUbGHq. Special thanks to my supervisors, Martin Dijst and Camille Perchoux, and all co-authors for their invaluable contribution. Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) SURREAL_ITN