This study investigated the effects of nighttime lighting conditions and stress on the affective appraisal of a virtual environment (VE). The effective application of VEs in emotionally intense simulations requires precise control over their characteristics that affect the user's emotions and behavior. It is known that humans have an innate fear of darkness, which increases after exposure to stress and extrapolates to ecologically valid (immersive) VEs. This study investigated if the simulated level of illumination determines the affective appraisal of a VE, particularly after stress. Participants explored either a daytime or a nighttime version of a VE, after performing either an acute psychosocial stress task (Trier Social Stress Test, or TSST) or a relaxing control task. The affective qualities of the VE were appraised through the Russel and Pratt semantic questionnaire on the valence and arousal dimensions. Distress was assessed through free salivary cortisol, the state self-report scale from the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and heart rate. In addition, memory for scenic details was tested through a yes-no recognition test. Free salivary cortisol levels, heart rates, and scores on the STAI all indicate that participants who were subjected to the stress task indeed showed signs of distress, whereas participants in the control group showed no signs of stress. The results of the semantic questionnaire and the recognition test showed no significant overall effect of time-of-day conditions on the affective appraisal of the VE or on the recognition of its details, even after prior stress. The experiences of users exploring the VE were not affected by the simulated lighting conditions, even after acute prior stress. Thus, lowering the illumination level in a desktop VE is not sufficient to elicit anxiety. Hence, desktop VE representations are different from immersive VE representations in this respect. This finding has implications for desktop VE representations that are deployed for serious gaming and training purposes.

The continuously growing global demands on a finite land resource will require better strategic policies and management of trade-offs to avoid conflicts between different land-use sectors. Visions of the future can support strategic planning by stimulating dialogue, building a consensus on shared priorities and providing long-term targets. We present a novel approach to elicit stakeholder visions of future desired land use, which was applied with a broad range of experts to develop cross-sectoral visions in Europe. The approach is based on (i) combination of software tools and facilitation techniques to stimulate engagement and creativity; (ii) methodical selection of stakeholders; (iii) use of land attributes to deconstruct the multifaceted sectoral visions into land-use changes that can be clustered into few cross-sectoral visions, and (iv) a rigorous iterative process. Three cross-sectoral visions of sustainable land use in Europe in 2040 emerged from applying the approach in participatory workshops involving experts in nature conservation, recreation, agriculture, forestry, settlements, energy, and water. The three visions-Best Land in Europe, Regional Connected and Local Multifunctional-shared a wish to achieve a land use that is sustainable through multifunctionality, resource use efficiency, controlled urban growth, rural renewal and widespread nature. However, they differ on the scale at which land services are provided-EU-wide, regional or local-reflecting the land-sparing versus land-sharing debate. We discuss the usefulness of the approach, as well as the challenges posed and solutions offered by the visions to support strategic land-use planning.

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The aspirations, motivations and choices of individual European citizens are a major driver of the future of global, European and local land use. However, until now no land use study has explicitly attempted to find out how the general public wants to live in the future. This paper forms a first attempt to survey European citizens to understand their desired future lives in relation to consequences for European land use. We used a crowdsourcing experiment to elicit visions from young Europeans about their lives in 2040. Participants completed a graphic novel around carefully selected questions, allowing them to create a story of their imagined future lives in pictures. The methodology worked well, and the sample seemed reasonably representative albeit skewed towards an educated population. In total, 1131 responses from 29 countries were received. Results show a strong desire for change, and for more sustainable lifestyles. There is desire for local and ecologically friendly food production, to eat less meat, to have access to green infrastructure and the ability to cycle to work. However, international travel remains popular, and the desire for extensive food production and owning detached houses with gardens will likely result in complex land use trade-offs. Future work could focus more specifically on quantifying these trade-offs and inform respondents about the consequences of their lifestyle choices. This was a first attempt to use crowdsourcing to understand citizen visions for their lives in the future, and our lessons learned will help future studies improve representativeness and increase responses.

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This study investigated whether personal relevance influences the affective appraisal of a desktop virtual environment (VE) in simulated darkness. In the real world, darkness often evokes thoughts of vulnerability, threat, and danger, and may automatically precipitate emotional responses consonant with those thoughts (fear of darkness). This influences the affective appraisal of a given environment after dark and the way humans behave in that environment in conditions of low lighting. Desktop VEs are increasingly deployed to study the effects of environmental qualities and (architectural or lighting) interventions on human behaviour and feelings of safety. Their (ecological) validity for these purposes depends critically on their ability to correctly address the user’s cognitive and affective experience. Previous studies with desktop (i.e., non-immersive) VEs found that simulated darkness only slightly affects the user’s behavioral and emotional responses to the represented environment, in contrast to the responses observed for immersive VEs. We hypothesize that the desktop VE scenarios used in previous studies less effectively induced emotional and behavioral responses because they lacked personal relevance. In addition, factors like signs of social presence and relatively high levels of ambient lighting may also have limited these responses. In this study, young female volunteers explored either a daytime or a night-time (low ambient light level) version of a desktop VE representing a deserted (no social presence) prototypical Dutch polder landscape. To enhance the personal relevance of the simulation, a fraction of the participants were led to believe that the virtual exploration tour would prepare them for a follow-up tour through the real world counterpart of the VE. The affective appraisal of the VE and the emotional response of the participants were measured through self-report. The results show that the VE was appraised as slightly less pleasant and more arousing in simulated darkness (compared to a daylight) condition, as expected. However, the fictitious follow-up assignment had no emotional effects and did not influence the affective appraisal of the VE. Further research is required to establish the qualities that may enhance the validity of desktop VEs for both etiological (e.g., the effects of signs of darkness on navigation behaviour and fear of crime) and intervention (e.g., effects of street lighting on feelings of safety) research.

The authors added task-relevant sounds to a computer-mediated instructor in-the-loop virtual training for firefighter commanders in an attempt to raise the engagement and arousal of the users. Computer-mediated training for crew commanders should provide a sensory experience that is sufficiently intense to make the training viable and effective. In practice, sound is an important source of information for firefighters. During an evaluation of a soundless computer-mediated and instructor in-the-loop virtual training, both trainees and instructors frequently remarked that the lack of sound made the simulation less convincing and engaging. Research on entertainment games has shown that users may experience higher levels of presence, engagement, and arousal when sound is included in the simulations. The authors therefore hypothesized that the addition of task-relevant (informative) sounds to a virtual training would raise the engagement and arousal of the users, and the overall convincingness of the simulation. In this study, they included verisimilar and task-relevant sounds in an instructor in-the-loop computer-mediated firefighter training and assessed how these sounds affect user experience. In contrast to the common belief of trainees and instructors, the authors find that merely adding task-relevant sounds does not necessarily increase the engagement and arousal of the users. The authors conclude that the physical presence of (and verbal communication with) the instructor probably distracted from the simulation, and an integral sound design involving mediated communication with a remotely present instructor may be required to resolve this problem.