As social VR grows in popularity, understanding how to optimise interactions becomes increasingly important. Interpersonal distance (the physical space people maintain between each other) is a key aspect of user experience. Previous work in psychology has shown that breaches of personal space cause stress and discomfort. Thus, effectively managing this distance is crucial in social VR, where social interactions are frequent. Teleportation, a commonly used locomotion method in these environments, involves distinct cognitive processes and requires users to rely on their ability to estimate distance. Despite its widespread use, the effect of teleportation on proximity remains unexplored. To investigate this, we measured the interpersonal distance of 70 participants during interactions with embodied conversational agents, comparing teleportation to natural walking. Our findings revealed that participants maintained closer proximity from the agents during teleportation. Female participants kept greater distances from the agents than male participants, and natural walking was associated with higher agency and body ownership, though co-presence remained unchanged. We propose that differences in spatial perception and spatial cognitive load contribute to reduced interpersonal distance with teleportation. These findings emphasise that proximity should be a key consideration when selecting locomotion methods in social VR, highlighting the need for further research on how locomotion impacts spatial perception and social dynamics in virtual environments.

翻译：随着社交VR的日益普及，理解如何优化互动变得愈发重要。人际距离（人与人之间保持的物理空间）是用户体验的关键方面。以往的心理学研究表明，个人空间的侵入会引发压力和不适。因此，在社交互动频繁的社交VR中，有效管理这一距离至关重要。瞬移作为这些环境中常用的移动方式，涉及独特的认知过程，并需要用户依赖其距离估计能力。尽管瞬移被广泛使用，但其对距离的影响尚待探究。为研究此问题，我们测量了70名参与者在与具身对话代理互动时的人际距离，并将瞬移与自然行走进行了比较。研究结果显示，在瞬移过程中，参与者与代理保持的距离更近。女性参与者与代理的距离大于男性参与者，而自然行走与更高的主体感和身体所有权相关，但共同临场感保持不变。我们认为，空间感知差异和空间认知负荷的增加是导致瞬移时人际距离缩小的原因。这些发现强调，在社交VR中选择移动方式时，应重点考虑距离因素，并凸显了进一步研究移动方式如何影响虚拟环境中空间感知与社会动态的必要性。