Determining people's interaction and audience anxieties in virtual reality environments

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of Second Life application, which is one of the desktop virtual reality environments, on the peoples' interaction and audience anxieties. A survey, which consists of two parts, has been prepared for the research. In the first part, in what way the virtual environment affected individuals' interaction anxiety was investigated. In the second part, it was investigated that whether the audience anxiety of the individuals was affected. In addition to these two parts, it was also examined that whether the levels of interaction and audience anxieties differ in terms of gender, age and duration of use. According to the results of the research, users generally do not have much interaction anxiety in the virtual environment. But the audience anxiety is higher than the interaction anxiety. Regarding gender, it was found that there was no significant difference between the genders in both the interaction anxiety and the audience anxiety. When the age groups were examined, it was determined that anxiety level is generally decreased as the age increased.