Design of Traditional Cultural Experiences Using Augmented Reality Based on Environmental Presence

Traditional cultural experiences are valuable for tourist destinations. Previous studies have developed systems for experiencing traditional culture using augmented reality (AR). However, few works have considered the effectiveness of different types of AR experiences of traditional cultural elements. In this article, we focus on equipment elements and environment elements, and propose design recommendations for an AR traditional cultural experience system that considers differences in the environmental presence of traditional cultural experiences. We conducted a comparative study with 49 users to understand the impact of these differences. We compared three options for handling environmental presence, including nonpresence, AR-presence, and real-presence. The results show that presenting environmental elements in a state of real-presence improved an AR experience of traditional culture. Additionally, we found that this setting worked positively for Japanese participants, whereas Chinese participants preferred environmental elements in the state of nonpresence.