The Influence of Incentives and Instructions on Behaviour in Driving Simulator Studies

There are a number of factors which may influence the validity of experimental studies, including the incentives offered and the instructions provided to participants. These have been little-studied in the driving domain. The aim of this study was to investigate how manipulating these factors influenced participants' feelings of 'presence' (i.e. the extent to which they believed they were actually driving and not in a simulated environment). The findings showed that imposing a penalty system for poor driving performance and providing 'good driving' instructions did not affect presence ratings and this can be explained by the inherent need to perform well under test conditions and the small range of performance variability expected in the driving scenario. Participants in the penalty and instructions conditions gave higher ratings for negative effects (related to physically feeling unwell), suggesting that these conditions made them more aware of the physical symptoms of being in a simulator.