ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Virtual Real.
Sec. Virtual Reality and Human Behaviour
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frvir.2025.1642730
Psychological Engines in VR Driving Training: How Self-Efficacy Drives Emotional Engagement via Flow and Anxiety
Provisionally accepted
- Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, China
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Objective: This study aimed to explore the psychological mechanisms influencing students' emotional engagement in a VR driver training context. It focused on how self-efficacy directly or indirectly influences emotional engagement through the dual mediating pathways of flow experience and learning anxiety. Methods: This study employed a structural equation modeling approach to analyze data from a valid sample of 151 participants in VR driver training. Model fit was assessed using a multinomial fit test, and path coefficients were estimated via maximum likelihood estimation. The hypothesized paths included the effects of self-efficacy on learning anxiety, flow experience, and emotional engagement, as well as the effects of learning anxiety and flow experience on emotional engagement. Results: Self-efficacy had a significantly negative effect on learning anxiety (β = –0.169, p = .046), and a significantly positive effect on both flow experience and emotional engagement (β = 0.471, p < .001; β = 0.295, p < .001). The effect of flow experience on emotional engagement was also significantly positive (β = 0.442, p < .001), whereas learning anxiety had a significantly negative effect on emotional engagement (β = –0.176, p = .009). Self-efficacy indirectly influenced emotional engagement through two mediating pathways: flow experience and learning anxiety, with a stronger mediating effect of flow (indirect effect = 0.208) and a smaller mediating effect of learning anxiety (indirect effect = 0.030). The explanatory power of the model was substantial, with a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.632 for emotional engagement. Conclusion: This study verified the critical role of self-efficacy in students' emotional engagement within a VR learning environment. Self-efficacy not only directly influenced emotional engagement but also exerted indirect effects by enhancing flow experience and alleviating learning anxiety. Flow experience played a central role in facilitating emotional engagement, significantly outweighing the mediating effect of learning anxiety. These findings provide empirical support for understanding the psychological mechanisms underlying virtual reality learning, as well as a theoretical basis for optimizing VR education and training and improving students' emotional engagement and learning outcomes.
Keywords: digital driving training1, self-efficacy2, learning anxiety3, flow experience4, emotional engagement5
Received: 14 Jun 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Peng, Wang, Meng and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wendan Huang, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, China
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