How Will Video Conference Fatigue Affect Participants of MICE in the With-COVID-19 Era? Focusing on Video Conference Quality, Social Presence Theory, and Flow

Abstract

Is our mental health at risk due to spending a significant amount of time online due to the COVID-19 pandemic? In the new era that we are living in, where we live a life that coexists with the virus, we are participating in video conferences held online rather than on-site in order to slow the spread of the virus. Video conferencing has become our necessity since March 2020, and is becoming a new standard, especially in the MICE industry. Recently, however, people who have excessively used video conference platforms are complaining of video conference fatigue, which is a new negative emotion such as stress, anxiety, and worry as well as general work fatigue. Therefore, this study focused on the mechanism of video conferencing in MICE, which is rapidly digitally converted by the virus, and the digital psychological factors of the participants. This study derived the quality attributes of video conferencing in MICE and empirically analyzed the relationship with digital psychological factors of the video conference participants, such as video conference fatigue, social presence, and flow. One hundred and thirty-eight valid questionnaires collected from participants of several international academic conferences held in EXCO, Daegu, Korea, from 23 to 28 May 2021, were analyzed. The main results are as follows. First, unlike general video conference fatigue, MICE video conference fatigue was not found to be related to the preceding and following variables. This is due to the characteristics of the MICE video conference and the expertise of the participants. Second, social presence was identified as an important variable in MICE video conferencing. Although media-mediated, the feeling of being present with the presenter and participants was found to affect the participants’ flow in the video conference. Third, in this study, the fun factor was identified as the most important video conference quality that can enhance the social presence of the video conference participants of MICEs.