Bridging Engagement and Behavioral Performance in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Role of Interaction Design and Cultural Contex

This research explores user interaction patterns with immersive Virtual Reality (VR) systems and performance patterns stemming from these interactions. User engagement has been established as a primary element of successful interaction in the existing body of work; however, there has been scant research focused on whether user engagement contributes to successful task performance. This study focuses on how immersion, interactivity, and realism coupled with user engagement and behavioral competence influence task performance in a Virtual Reality (VR) environment. Using a combination of structural equation modeling and behavioral accuracy within the data (n = 120), it was found that immersion, interactivity and realism stimulate user engagement positively. However, user engagement does not guarantee successful task performance. Within the data, context-dependent scenarios exhibited significant errors whereas participant engagement was perceived to be high, demonstrating that perceived user engagement does not correlate with the effectiveness of the interaction. It was found that the cultural context of the participant plays an important role in the observed user error. The study suggested that performance of the task is scoped and restricted by the system's design and the participant's cognitive and cultural lens. This research adds to the Human-Computer Interaction literature by illustrating that user engagement is a necessary, but not sufficient, criterion of effective interaction. This research proposes that behavioral performance and cultural context should be combined when evaluating an immersive system and provides guidance for adaptive and User-Centered Virtual Reality (VR) environments