Virtuell verklighet och resebeteende : En kvalitativ studie i flygresenärers inställning till virtuella resor

Sammanfattning: Virtual reality, or VR, is a 3D technology that has become increasingly common, and in connection with the covid-19 pandemic, travel in VR was also launched. The purpose of our study is to shed light on the impact of virtual reality on Swedish air travelers’ travel behavior, by studying their attitude towards future air travel in relation to virtual travel. Can they choose virtual trips and there by forego the flight, or are travelers motivated after their virtual trips to also visit the destinations physically? Furthermore, how do they see the climate impact of aviation and whether it has any significance for them, we have conducted qualitative semi-structured studies where we collected sixteen responses from a survey posted in travel-interested groups on the social media platform Facebook and interviewed ten airtravelers at Stockholm Arlanda Airport. In addition, we interviewed an employee at a VR center and tested a game in virtual reality. We have analyzed our collected data material and compared the answers of all respondents. The results show that physical travel is important for most respondents, they mentioned various needs that they felt virtual travel could notsatisfy. The climate impact of the aviation industry had varying degrees of importance in the two compared respondent groups. The interest in virtual travel was not that great, but increased when a fictitious scenario was presented, when more people could imagine replacing the flight with the virtual one.