Today’s sustainability challenges arise from intertwined environmental, social, and economic pressures. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 call for reducing resource consumption while ensuring equitable access, yet achieving these aims requires more than technological innovation — it demands shifts in public awareness and behavior. Virtual Reality (VR) offers an immersive, emotionally engaging platform that can foster empathy, enhance ecological understanding, and inspire pro-environmental action.

While previous studies have reported promising outcomes — such as improved environmental attitudes, heightened empathy, and behavioral intentions — existing research is limited in several ways. Most studies are short-term, with little longitudinal evidence on whether VR-induced behavior changes persist over time. Cross-cultural studies remain scarce, leaving uncertainties about how VR’s impact varies across socio-economic and cultural contexts. Moreover, quantitative research often focuses on self-reported attitudes rather than observed, measurable behavior changes in real-world settings.

Addressing these gaps is crucial for designing evidence-based, scalable VR interventions that contribute meaningfully to sustainability goals. This special issue aims to gather empirical research that bridges these shortcomings, exploring how VR can be optimally designed and implemented to enhance ecological awareness and drive lasting, measurable behavioral change across diverse populations.

Topics covered

This article collection invites contributions that explore how Virtual Reality (VR) can be harnessed to advance environmental sustainability and drive lasting behavioral change. We welcome empirical, theoretical, and review-based submissions that address one or more of the following themes:

• Design Methodologies for Sustainability-Focused VR – Approaches to creating immersive experiences that confront environmental challenges, including virtual prototyping of eco-friendly solutions, gamification to promote sustainable habits, and adaptive designs tailored to diverse users.
• Empirical Evidence and Research Gaps – Longitudinal, cross-cultural, and behaviorally validated studies that measure VR’s real-world impact on sustainability, moving beyond self-reported attitudes to observed actions.
Sector-Specific Applications and Case Studies – Applied research demonstrating VR’s contribution to sustainability in domains such as manufacturing, urban planning, healthcare, marketing, and policymaking.
• Behavior-Change Mechanisms and Emotional Engagement – Investigations into how VR fosters empathy, reduces psychological distance to environmental issues, and makes sustainable actions more tangible, supported by examples of measurable behavior change.
• Reviews and Methodological Innovations – Systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and novel methodological approaches for understanding and evaluating the link between immersive experiences and sustainable behavior.
We particularly encourage submissions that combine rigorous research design with innovative applications, and that bridge the gap between technological potential and measurable environmental impact.

Ethical Considerations and Open Science

Contributors are strongly encouraged to address ethical considerations in their research design and reporting. This includes:

•Participant Safety and Well-being – Mitigating risks such as cybersickness, sensory overload, or emotional distress when engaging with immersive content.

•Data Privacy and Security – Ensuring compliance with relevant data protection laws (e.g., GDPR) and safeguarding participant information collected in VR environments.

•Transparency and Reproducibility – Where applicable, authors should preregister their studies, obtain formal ethics approval, and make datasets, materials, and analysis code openly available in trusted repositories, in line with FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles.

Submissions that clearly document these ethical and open-science practices will be given priority during the review process.

Impact

The Research Topic aims to generate a well-balanced portfolio of contributions that deliver both scholarly and practical value. Our target is to publish at least 8 high-quality empirical studies providing robust, behaviorally validated evidence of VR’s impact on sustainability, 2 systematic reviews or meta-analyses synthesizing current knowledge and identifying research gaps, and 2 policy briefs translating findings into actionable recommendations for decision-makers. Evaluation of the issue’s success will be based on the diversity and rigor of methods employed, the breadth of sectors represented, and the real-world applicability of the insights generated—ensuring tangible contributions to advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Are you interested in contributing a manuscript to this Research Topic?

The Role of VR in Facilitating Behavioral Changes Toward Sustainable Environmental Practices.