Augmented reality is an area that is expected to undergo the biggest changes through 5G communication technology, drawing attention as a key content in the era of the fourth industrial revolution. Augmented reality experience is being used in various fields such as education, medical care and tourism as an effective tool to arouse new imagination and curiosity and attract new users by providing fun. With the development and activation of augmented reality technology, attempts by companies and local governments to incorporate augmented reality are also increasing, but there is a lack of research to experience augmented reality firsthand and measure its effects at a time when demand for augmented reality users is increasing and expectations for experience are rising.
Based on the fact that augmented reality can deliver empirical elements to users as users download and use the augmented reality app directly, this study is meaningful in that it applies the theory of experience economy of Pine and Gilmore(1998) to augmented reality to expand the scope of experience economy research through areas that were not previously covered. In addition, in order to understand the emotions and behaviors of users who experienced augmented reality in person, this study was actually intended to measure the persence of mobile devices after the subjects experienced augmented reality in person.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to: First, we would like to examine the structural influence relationship between the four elements of experience of entertainment, education, escapism, and aesthetic, persence, emotional response, and intention of visiting. Second, after experiencing augmented reality in person, we identify whether the persence affects the intention of the visit through emotional reactions and establish a theoretical basis for it. Third, we intend to expand the scope of research related to the experience economy by verifying whether the theory of experience economy can be applied to the augmented reality experience through empirical research. Finally, based on the findings identified above, we would like to provide activation measures and practical implications for inducing actual visits by users.
The preliminary survey of this study was conducted on 50 students from May 1-8, 2018, and was conducted on university students in Daegu and Gyeongbuk who experienced the ''Jung-gu Tourism AR Postcard Book''. Based on the preliminary survey analysis results, the survey was conducted in the same way as the preliminary survey from May 14 to June 1, 2018. A total of 320 questionnaires were distributed, and 281 of them were used in the final analysis, excluding 39 that were inconsistent or unresponsive.
The results of this study are as follows. First, after verifying how experience factors affect arousal, it was found that components that affect arousal have a significant positive influence on aesthetic experience, escapism experience, and entertainment experience. However, the education experience has shown no significant impact on arousal. These results show that the user''s arousal in augmented reality experience is an important emotion of inducing positive behavior with curiosity about the experience. Second, after verifying how experience factors affect pleasure, it was found that the components that affect pleasure have a significant positive influence on escapism experience, aesthetic experience, and entertainment experience. However, the education experience did not have a significant impact on pleasure. This suggests that the composition of various entertainment experience contents that are difficult to access in everyday life is important. Third, the persence has been found to have a positive influence on arousal and pleasure. This supported the results of this study by stating that persence is an important factor in the study of augmented reality users, with the same result as the preceding study that the experience of persence such as actual visit affects the interest and positive feelings of the visiting place. Finally, arousal was found to have a positive influence on pleasure, and pleasure had a positive influence on the intention of visitation.
Through this, the following theoretical and practical implications were derived from this study. First, if most research using augmented reality was focused on technology, this study is meaningful in that it wanted to understand the emotions and behaviors of users who experienced augmented reality directly using the theory of experience economy. Second, augmented reality experience, which has great visual effects, suggests that it is more important than anything else to improve the artistic sensibility perception that expresses tourist attractions attractively through vivid images and sounds, and that sensuous design and differentiated content should be developed. Third, augmented reality is drawing attention with technologies that create new values because of the sense of reality. A sense of reality that feels like reality is a leading factor that induces various emotions, and in order to enhance users'' sense of reality, they need to secure and build a lot of experience contents that can be enjoyed. Fourth, given that joy influences the intention of the visit, it suggests the need for an interesting and exciting content that can be felt with the whole body.
A sample of this study was conducted only on a specific app called ''Jung-gu Tourist AR Postcard Book'', which is a sample of university students in a specific area. Subsequent research is expected to re-verify the research models presented in this study using various research subjects and augmented reality apps as information and communication technologies develop.