"A Replication of the Trust Game in a Highly Immersive Virtual Reality Environment", 张旭博士, 香港科技大学（广州）, 助理教授

标题：A Replication of the Trust Game in a Highly Immersive Virtual Reality Environment

主讲人：张旭博士,  香港科技大学（广州）助理教授
日期：2025年03月26日（星期三）
时间：14:00 - 15:00
地点：T7-106-R1

摘要：

As the metaverse gains traction and other highly immersive virtual environment (HIVE) applications of virtual reality (VR) technologies emerge, understanding interpersonal trust in such virtual spaces is crucial. We adapt the canonical trust game experiment (Berg et al., 1995) to HIVE, where two participants in separate real-world spaces play an anonymous one-shot trust game in a virtual lab.Our first treatment replicates Berg et al. (1995) and does not allow participants to see each other's avatars, isolating the effect of being immersed in VR alone on trust and trustworthiness. In the second treatment, participants see their counterparts’ avatars before the game, allowing us to directly compare trust and trustworthiness with and without the visual avatar presence of others.To compare decisions made in a traditional physical lab environment with those in a VR setting, we also include a control group where participants sequentially make their decisions in a physical room without seeing each other in reality or VR. We find no significant difference in trust and trustworthiness between the physical group and the VR group without visual avatar presence, while visual avatar presence significantly increases trust. Male participants are more trusting than females, and those with more gaming experience are more inclined to reciprocate.This study is the first attempt to investigate trust dynamics in HIVE, showcasing the potential of VR in economic experiments.

主讲人简介：

张旭助理教授2020年5月获布朗大学经济学博士，现任职于香港科技大学（广州）创新创业与公共政策学域。主要研究领域为微观经济学理论、信息经济学、行为经济学与实验经济学。研究主题涵盖信息设计、非理性概率推断、信任与合作以及社会偏好等问题。主要研究成果发表于Journal of Political Economy、Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization等知名经济学国际期刊。