Special Issue Education Information Sciences Psychology and Education Sociology

Development of Gamified VR Content to Enhance Indoor Disaster Preparedness and Risk Perception

In Japan, natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods are frequent. However, many citizens view such disasters as impersonal events rather than imminent personal threats. This has led to low participation rates in local disaster drills and poor retention of disaster prevention knowledge, posing significant challenges. Against this backdrop, existing research has reported the effectiveness of disaster prevention education utilizing gamification and VR. However, when applying existing approaches to VR-based disaster prevention education, it is necessary to consider the potential psychological burden of highly realistic depictions, opportunities for self-directed hazard identification, and replay-oriented design. Therefore, this study developed VR disaster prevention learning content incorporating gamification. The content was designed to foster a sense of crisis about disasters and interest in replay while considering psychological burden. The proposed content employs a "spot-the-difference" game mechanic, requiring users to actively identify deficiencies in indoor disaster preparedness measures. As a proof of concept, a questionnaire survey was conducted immediately after the experience with 123 participants, including high school students. Many participants reported an increased sense of crisis regarding disasters and an intention to replay the game.

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Special Issue Information Sciences Psychology and Education Sociology

Development of a VR Vertical Evacuation Simulator for Schools Integrating Conformity Bias for Disaster Preparedness Education

In recent years, Japan has experienced frequent water-related disasters, including earthquake-induced tsunamis and flooding caused by heavy rainfall, increasing the importance of disaster preparedness measures. However, participation in disaster drills remains low, indicating that many citizens do not regard disaster preparedness as a personally relevant issue. In addition, conventional drills often require participants to follow predetermined routes and therefore make it difficult to experience unexpected situations, such as blocked routes or collective behavior during panic. Although disaster simulators using virtual reality (VR) have advanced, few studies have focused on indoor flooding while also considering the influence of other evacuees’ incorrect evacuation behavior. This study therefore developed a simulator that enables users to experience vertical evacuation during indoor flooding in school facilities, which are often designated as evacuation sites. By placing non-player characters (NPCs) that exhibit incorrect evacuation behavior, the simulator makes it possible to examine how the behavior of others may affect participants’ evacuation decisions, subjective difficulty, and sense of urgency. An empirical evaluation clarified the simulator’s potential value for disaster preparedness education and awareness raising, as well as issues requiring further verification.

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Article Information Sciences Others Psychology and Education Sociology

Clarifying the Sharpened network diversity in French flair rugby

This study aimed that open rugby, known as flair rugby, drives the modern game by analyzing the 2022-2023 international test matches of France representative team. We examined the superiority of a spatial tactic called French flair rugby. First, the advantage of creating a relatively large number of networks was demonstrated. From the transitivity analysis of the network (CUG test; Conditional Uniform Graph test), the cooperation occurs at a higher level than in other networks. The network graph structure showed which players functioned centrally at which time of match as unusual positions, i.e., multi-position and multi-skill. In this study, we operationally defined this diversity as the sum of the standardized eigenvector centralities. We found that the increase in the time-series score balance tended to reduce and sharpened the diversity. As a result of examining a scale-free model in network theory, Sharpening the diversity (central and transitive role players) tended of the network power law scaling.

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Special Issue Environmental Sciences Psychology and Education Sociology

The Effects of Positive and Negative Ions on esports Performance and Arousal Levels Part 2 -Testing Higher Ion Density-

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychological effects of higher positive and negative ion conditions on the arousal levels of esports players during a racing game. Participants (10 males) from a collegiate esports team were the participants in the study. The effects of higher concentrations of positive and negative ions were evaluated in a randomized crossover. Each participant performed two experiments four weeks apart; two experimental environments were used: positive and negative ions filling the atmosphere (PNI) condition and a control (CON) condition. A car racing game was employed as the performance task. Arousal was measured by the two-dimensional mood scale (TDMS) and electroencephalogram (EEG). EEG was used to measure arousal. The results showed that the level of arousal in the subjective assessment and the level of arousal in the EEG were significantly higher in the CON condition for PNI. In addition, PNI performed significantly better on the game task than in the CON condition. The present study demonstrated in positive and negative ion environments with higher concentrations than in the previous study, and the results showed higher arousal levels in subjective assessments, indicating that higher concentrations of ionic environments are beneficial for esports players.

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