Avtar Trust Scale (ATA) RAW Data

Avatars are the alter-egos of users in Social Virtual Reality (SVR). They enable embodied interaction, preserving a wide spectrum of non-verbal and verbal communication cues in real-time, independent of users’ physical location. Avatar's appearance is highly variable as it spans from non to little human-like cartoonish forms to photorealistic replicas of real persons, leading to a wide range of potential effects other’s digital appearance has on the interpersonal relations established during an interaction. This article specifically investigates how to establish and measure trust in avatars, as a vital requirement for successful social interactions. We constructed and validated a tool to measure trust in virtual avatars: the Avatar Trust Scale (ATS). The structure of trust in virtual avatars is composed of specific trust toward an avatar, consisting of “trustworthiness of the avatar”, “feeling secure with the avatar” and “willingness to interact with the avatar” and general trust, consisting of “propensity to trust avatars”, “propensity to trust humans” as well as “avatar literacy”. We present data from a German sample of 858 participants and present successful validation of a questionnaire measurement instrument on questionnaire and behavioral levels using convergent and divergent validation. With this scale trust in virtual avatars can be assessed. 

虚拟化身（Avatar）是用户在社交虚拟现实（Social Virtual Reality, SVR）中的分身。它们支持具身交互，可实时保留丰富的非言语与言语沟通线索，且不受用户物理位置的限制。虚拟化身的外观具有极高可变性，覆盖从近乎非人、类人度极低的卡通化形态到高度写实的真人复刻形象的全范围，这使得他人的数字外观对互动过程中建立的人际关系产生多样潜在影响。本文专门探究如何建立并衡量虚拟化身信任度，而这是实现成功社交互动的核心前提。我们研发并验证了一款用于衡量虚拟化身信任度的工具：虚拟化身信任量表（Avatar Trust Scale, ATS）。虚拟化身信任的结构可分为两类：针对特定虚拟化身的特定信任与一般性信任。其中特定信任包含"虚拟化身可信度""与虚拟化身共处的安全感"以及"与虚拟化身互动的意愿"；一般性信任则涵盖"信任虚拟化身的倾向""信任人类的倾向"以及"虚拟化身素养"。我们展示了来自858名德国参与者的样本数据，并通过聚合效度与区分效度分析，在问卷与行为两个层面成功验证了该问卷测量工具的有效性。借助该量表，即可实现虚拟化身信任度的量化评估。