Who Are Virtual Reality Headset Owners? A Survey and Comparison of Headset Owners and Non-Owners

Abstract

The number of people who own a virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) has reached a point where researchers can readily recruit HMD owners to participate remotely using their own equipment. However, HMD owners recruited online may differ from the university community members who typically participate in VR research. HMD owners (n=220) and non-owners (n=282) were recruited through two online work sites-Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Prolific-and an undergraduate participant pool. Participants completed a survey in which they provided demographic information and completed measures of HMD use, video game use, spatial ability, and motion sickness susceptibility. In the context of the populations sampled, the results provide 1) a characterization of HMD owners, 2) a snapshot of the most commonly owned HMDs, 3) a comparison between HMD owners and non-owners, and 4) a comparison among online workers and undergraduates. Significant gender differences were found: men reported lower motion sickness susceptibility and more video game hours than women, and men outperformed women on spatial tasks. Men comprised a greater proportion of HMD owners than non-owners, but after accounting for this imbalance, HMD owners did not differ appreciably from non-owners. Comparing across recruitment platform, male undergraduates outperformed male online workers on spatial tests, and female undergraduates played fewer video game hours than female online workers. The data removal rate was higher from Amazon compared to Prolific, possibly reflecting greater dishonesty. These results provide a description of HMD users that can inform researchers recruiting remote participants through online work sites. These results also signal a need for caution when comparing inperson VR research that primarily enrolls undergraduates to online VR research that enrolls online workers.

Conducting Unsupervised Virtual Reality User Studies Online

“…Comparing our sample to the subset of crowdworkers who are HMD-owners shows a similar biased representation. Kelly et al (2021) recently conducted a survey of headset owners and non-owners in online platforms (AMT and Prolific), comparing an undergraduate participant pool, also showed a negligible proportion of women and elders among HMD owners. Naturally, this imposes some limitations on studies conducted this way; specifically with regard to generalizability of findings.…”

Remote research on locomotion interfaces for virtual reality: Replication of a lab-based study on teleporting interfaces

“…One notable difference between remote VR studies and lab-based studies is the shift in participant demographics. A survey comparing VR headset owners to non-owners [10] reported that women are underrepresented among VR owners. Underrepresentation of women has been documented even in lab-based VR research [22], and this problem is likely to be compounded in remote VR research that recruits VR owners.…”

“…In one recent and relatively large (n=226) remote VR study [17], women comprised only 12% of the final sample. Another potentially important sample difference is that VR headset owners, on average, spend more time playing video games than do non-owners [10]. Demographic differences such as these are particularly relevant to VR research due to 1) the inherently spatial nature of VR and 2) the documented associations between spatial ability and participant characteristics such as gender and video game experience [6,10].…”

“…There may also be important differences between participant samples recruited for lab and remote studies [10,34]. For example, remote participants are likely to be older and more diverse than those recruited through the typical university community.…”

VR Users Are More Relaxed and Optimistic during COVID Lockdown than Others

“…The growing number of HMD owners now allows us to conduct our VR research remotely. Since research has shown that there is no significant difference between HMD owners recruited online, in university laboratories or with AMT 1 , except for the number of hours played by female owners (Kelly, J. W., et al, 2021). We have chosen to recruit our HMD owners and our control group via social networks, on public and private specialized groups.…”