The effect of perceived realism on user acceptance in the in-flight safety videos

Abstract

Although plane accidents have significantly decreased since the emergence of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the 1970s, 1,500 people still die in plane crashes every year, 900 in fatal accidents with a survival rate of less than 1 percent, and 600 in ‘practically survivable’ accidents. Of those, 330 died from direct cause of impact, and 270 died as a result of smoke, toxic substances, or failure to evacuate. Even if the proportion of death rate due to the delay in evacuation is comparably smaller than the other factors, there is no doubt that it still brings fatal consequences for passengers. Several accident reports indicate that people show various behavioral patterns due to psychological anxiety about having to evacuate, which disrupts them from evacuation. In another report, only half of those who watched the airline safety information video remembered the content, and only 3 percent could pull out a life jacket and wear it. Thus, it is crucial to effectively convey the information of the safety information video, which currently seems like it is not working so efficiently. As a solution, to make people pay attention to the video and at the same time to promote their brand, airline companies have been adding entertaining elements in their safety videos, which might positively affect people's mood but negatively on delivery information, according to the prior studies that were practiced in the department of aviation. However, these studies on aviation videos tend to only use individual elements as a factor of entertainment – which in media communication defines there is more than one cause when the media entertain people. The narrative, ability to relate to characters, use of images, aesthetics, editing techniques, etc. all influence entertainment, thus this study attempts to explore aviation videos and the effect of entertainment, which the cause of it is inclusively defined here as perceived realism, to the viewer when they intake the information. The study was conducted through an online survey, and three questions related to affectional acceptance – preference, interest, and brand awareness, and three related to informational acceptance – information delivery, amount of information, and memorability of information, were asked on a 5-point Likert scale for the measure. The average means were pulled out for the highest scores, according to the total numbers of 107 participants, gender groups, and age groups. The numbers were also statistically analyzed using SPSS to see if there were any significant differences between groups. The result implies that the realism of context was directly related to the cause of entertainment rather than the realism of images, and both affectional and informational acceptance were higher when the video was filmed in live action rather than when it was 2D animated. The result was irrelevant to the gender but there were significant differences in the age groups. The implications are discussed further in the section.