When You Exercise Your Avatar in a Virtual Game: The Role of Avatars’ Body Shape and Behavior in Users’ Health Behavior

Abstract We experience virtual worlds as avatars—we dress, move, engage in activities or interact with other users as avatars. Recent studies suggest that embodying an avatar does not only influence users’ behavior in a virtual environment, but it can also change users’ behavior in reality. However, little has been known about the role of an avatar's appearance in changing users’ behavior through embodying the avatar. We investigated how an online game avatar's body shape (obese vs. normal weight) and health behavior (healthy behavior vs. unhealthy behavior) can affect users’ health behavior after their virtual experience. Specifically, we conducted a laboratory experiment, and assigned participants to either an obese or a normal-weight avatar in a game. Half of the participants’ avatars performed healthy behaviors (engaged in physical activities and vegetable consumption), and the other half of participants performed unhealthy behaviors (engaged in sedentary behavior and binge-eating). After 20-min gameplay, participants were offered a box with high-sugar cookies, and also asked to use an exercising machine. According to the results, the normal avatar's healthy behavior increased participants’ exercising behavior (use of the exercising machine). However, the obese avatar's healthy behavior did not. Additional analyses revealed that using an avatar with an unhealthy lifestyle predicted male participants’ consumption of high-sugar cookies. The avatar's body shape alone did not independently predict neither participants’ exercising behavior nor cookie consumption. Theoretical and practical implications for the use of virtual environments to increase users’ health behavior were discussed.