7 The Efects of VR Environments on the Acceptance, Experience, and Expectations of Cultural Heritage Learning EUGENE CH’NG, NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality, University of Nottingham, China YUE LI, International Doctoral Innovation Centre, University of Nottingham, China SHENGDAN CAI, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Nottingham, China FUI-THENG LEOW, Faculty of Business, University of Nottingham, China This article attempts to understand how present Virtual Reality (VR) environments can contribute to enhancing the commu- nication of cultural heritage by providing an experience of the past that is acceptable for the younger generation and how museums and cultural institutions should adopt and use such technologies. Aspects of acceptance, experience, and expecta- tion of VR with the underlying values are not well understood but are important for the sustainability of the communication of cultural heritage as a bequest to future generations. We conducted a combined quantitative–qualitative study on the par- ticipants who have various prior experience with gaming and VR, and diferent levels of knowledge on the history presented within the virtual environment. This study investigates how participants accept and are stimulated in terms of personal experience and their expectations and ideas for the future of museums if VR is used for enhancing the learning of cultural heritage. Prior gaming and VR experience were investigated to see whether they do indeed infuence the preference for using VR for learning cultural heritage. We demonstrated that particular age groups and background are especially agreeable to virtual reality as environments for learning and experiencing cultural heritage, regardless of their knowledge of the historical context of the virtually reconstructed site. Our fndings also revealed important behaviours in our demographics group with regards to user preferred length of time and the believability of the virtual environment and how it infuences aspects of their experience such as the exploration of the heritage site, familiarity, and meaning making. The study has implications for the use of VR for enhancing the experience of cultural heritage in museums and cultural institutions. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Virtual reality; User studies; Additional Key Words and Phrases: Digital heritage, virtual heritage, digital technology, virtual reality, technology acceptance ACM Reference format: Eugene Ch’ng, Yue Li, Shengdan Cai, and Fui-Theng Leow. 2020. The Efects of VR Environments on the Acceptance, Experi- ence, and Expectations of Cultural Heritage Learning. ACM J. Comput. Cult. Herit. 13, 1, Article 7 (February 2020), 21 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3352933 This work was carried out at the NVIDIA Joint-Lab on Mixed Reality and the Digital Heritage Centre. The authors acknowledge the fnan- cial support from the Science and Technology Department of Zhejiang Province (2017C33029), IAMET (2017D10035), Ningbo Science and Technology Bureau, and the International Doctoral Innovation Centre (IDIC). Authors’ addresses: E. Ch’ng (corresponding author), Digital Heritage Centre, University of Nottingham, 199 Taikang East Road, Ningbo, Zhejiang, 315100, China; email: eugene.chng@nottingham.edu.cn; Y. Li, International Doctoral Innovation Centre, University of Nottingham, 199 Taikang East Road, Ningbo, Zhejiang, 315100, China; email: yueli@nottingham.edu.cn; S. Cai, Faculty of Human- ities and Social Sciences, University of Nottingham, 199 Taikang East Road, Ningbo, Zhejiang, 315100, China; email: shengdan.cai@ nottingham.edu.cn; F.-T. Leow, Faculty of Business, University of Nottingham, 199 Taikang East Road, Ningbo, Zhejiang, 315100, China; email: fui-theng.leow@nottingham.edu.cn. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specifc permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. © 2020 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. 1556-4673/2020/02-ART7 $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3352933 ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, Vol. 13, No. 1, Article 7. Publication date: February 2020.