Is Seeing Believing and Hearing Trusting? Exploring the Role of Visual and Vocal Cues in Shaping User Trust in VR News Anchors

Amid the global decline in news credibility, immersive journalism in virtual reality (VR) offers opportunities to enhance trust and engagement through presence and interactivity. As the communicators of news, virtual news anchors play a key role in shaping audience perceptions. However, the mechanisms through which virtual anchors in VR elicit audience trust remain underexplored. Guided by the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework, this study investigates how the visual style and voiceover of VR news avatars influence perceived realism, and how these perceptions subsequently shape trust and news credibility. In a $2 \times 2$ within-subjects experiment $(N = 24)$, participants viewed a virtual news anchor featuring either (1) a realistic or (2) a cartoon-like visual style, paired with either (1) an anthropomorphic or (2) a neutral voiceover. Results indicate that visual style exerted a dominant influence on perceived realism and trust in virtual anchors. By contrast, while voiceover type did not affect perceived realism, perceived voice realism significantly predicted trust, highlighting the nuanced role of vocal cues in VR news contexts. Notably, the interaction between visual and vocal realism failed to yield an additive effect on trust, and avatar trust did not significantly predict news credibility. Our findings shed further light on avatar trust in immersive news environments and provide design insights for the development of credible and trustworthy virtual anchors.