Mastery experiences in immersive virtual reality promote pro-environmental waste-sorting behavior

The rapid digitalization following COVID-19 necessitates best-practice knowledge on how to use educational technologies such as immersive virtual reality (IVR). At the same time, to deal with climate change, we require new ways to embed climate change education in formal education. The current study is one of the first to investigate the feasibility of an alternative educational approach to improving waste management in the classroom as part of formal education, utilizing mastery experiences in IVR. We explore the use of a novel IVR simulation on waste management, an example of pro-environmental behavior, for climate change education. A total of 173 high school students participated in a pre-registered intervention investigating the impact of IVR on knowledge and intentions to act pro-environmentally. A 2x2 design was used to compare different design approaches to the IVR simulation based on the instructional design elements of the instruction sequence (Direct Instruction vs. Productive Failure) and feedback (Corrective Feedback vs. Exaggerated Feedback). The results indicated that IVR was effective for increasing students’ knowledge (η 2  = 0.41), intentions (η 2  = 0.10), self-efficacy (η 2  = 0.4), and response efficacy (η 2  = 0.35) and that students found the simulation interesting and enjoyable. Furthermore, self-efficacy was found to predict intentions (B = 0.190, p = .015), supporting the idea that cognitive and affective factors drive the effectiveness of IVR. No significant differences were found in the effectiveness of the instructional design elements. This suggests that IVR can be an effective educational technology for learning through mastery experiences, but that more research on the boundary conditions of how and when to apply different instructional design elements effectively is needed.