Faith, form, and the bin: the CT-VR framework for culturally tuned recycling infrastructure in Gulf cities

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Cities in the Gulf Region, such as Doha, are implementing new strategies to manage waste in an environmentally friendly manner. Despite rapid petroleum-based urban development creating unplanned leftover spaces, no systematic research has explored residents' utilization of recycling containers within these areas. This study employs virtual reality (VR) as a pre-deployment tool for testing culturally tuned recycling infrastructure in urban leftover spaces. A PRISMA 2020-compliant systematic review was performed across six electronic databases using a dual screening strategy, followed by an evaluation of each study via the MMAT and ROBINS-I tool. This study introduces the Culturally Tuned VR (CT-VR) framework, which encompasses 18 studies categorized into three primary themes: VR for design evaluation, VR for pro-environmental behavior, and assessment of urban leftover spaces (ULSp). There is no overlap among these themes. One study employed immersive techniques to evaluate recycling infrastructure, while another used both self-reported and objective measures of presence and tracking. However, none of these studies considered Islamic environmental ethics as a variable in environmental design. The absence of studies in these intersecting cells is a bounded observation about the retrieved corpus rather than a claim about the entire field, and it is examined through a risk-of-bias sensitivity analysis reported in the Supplementary material. Hence, this study introduced a socio-spatially defined VR framework featuring Khalifa (Stewardship) and Taharah (Purity) as modifiable design parameters, using a skin-swapping technique that alters surface treatments without changing the geometric properties or spatial location. No behavioral data or allocation outcomes were presented. The CT-VR framework establishes a five-category typology for ULSp, posits six verifiable hypotheses concerning these spaces, and presents a replicable multi-criteria decision-making method using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)-weighted criteria for site selection. A CT-VR framework was proposed for subsequent evaluation, behavioral experimentation, and testing. As a conceptual framework awaiting empirical validation, it is proposed as a practical and affordable approach for evaluating culturally adapted recycling infrastructure prior to physical implementation, subject to the physical pilot validation stage described in the empirical research program.