Virtual Reality Application That Leverages the Proteus Effect to Make Blood Donation a Positive Experience

In Japan, the reluctance of young people to donate blood has become a social issue. In this study, for the purpose of deterring the trend among young people not to donate blood, we propose a virtual reality (VR) application that changes blood donation into a positive experience by gradually changing the appearance of an avatar from a normal state to a state full of energy according to the elapsed time of blood donation. As a result of a comparison experiment between the proposed method to change blood donation into a positive experience and a method to distract attention by stimulation, it was clarified that the pain of blood donation was significantly alleviated through the proposed method.