Stimulating Interest by Guide Avatar in Virtual Reality Space

Abstract

Recently, more and more foreigners visit Japan. Therefore, there is increasing interest in Japanese traditional culture in the world. Japanese with sufficient knowledge of traditional culture are required in order to disseminate Japanese traditional culture to the world. On the other hand, dissemination ability of traditional Japanese culture is declined because of the lack of young people interest in traditional culture. In order to increase Japanese who have sufficient knowledge of traditional culture, it is necessary to arouse interests in young people. The value of traditional culture is intensified through understanding of the history background. The story marketing is one of the ways to stimulate interest. We consider that utilization of story marketing can provide knowledge of historical background that arouses interest. We propose a method to arouse an interest in Japanese traditional culture using the VR technology. In this method, a guide avatar introducing traditional culture is installed in VR space. We explore whether we can leverage story marketing and guide avatar to cause user interested