Charitable Branding Using Virtual Reality Narratives

Charitable brands like zoos or aquariums seek to educate the public and obtain donations to support their conservation agendas. Importantly, this also aligns with the public interest for these brands to be more conscientious, as keeping some animals in captivity might harm their welfare. To address this concern, these brands have begun to embrace virtual reality (VR) to create life-like animal exhibits, replacing the need for physical captivity. VR allows these brands to supplement exhibition content with additional information, including animal welfare and wildlife conservation ideas. These VR exhibits transport individuals to digital, immersive environments to enhance learning.
Many charitable brands (e.g., Oxfam, UNICEF) have increased appeals through VR and these require substantial resource investments; on average, VR development costs often exceed $100,000. Immersive technology like VR has potential to promote charitable giving and conservation. While there has been no research to investigate how VR animal exhibits affect charitable giving, VR (vs. other media) has shown ability to increase donations. Thus, we turn to VR and charitable giving research to answer this question and explain why and how VR may impact donations.