A Study on the Immersive Experience of Audiences in New Media Interactive Art

This study aims to reveal the constituent elements and operative mechanisms of audience immersive experience in new media interactive art and to construct an analytical framework with both theoretical and practical value.Adopting a qualitative research approach based on grounded theory, the study conducted in-depth interviews with audiences of multiple immersive art exhibitions.Through open, axial, and selective coding, four core categories-sensory immersion, emotional engagement, cognitive construction, and social interaction-and fifteen subcategories were extracted.Building on this, a questionnaire survey (N = 268) was carried out for quantitative validation.Reliability testing, validity analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis were employed to ensure the robustness of the model.The results indicate that the immersive experience unfolds as a chain process that moves from sensory input, to emotional deepening, to cognitive extension, and finally to social interaction.Quantitative data further show that subcategories such as visual immersion, spatial immersion, emotional resonance, and group atmosphere scored relatively high, reflecting the dominance of sensory and emotional dimensions, whereas knowledge integration and reflection, identity projection, and digital extension scored comparatively lower, revealing shortcomings in deeper cognitive processing and online dissemination.Accordingly, this study proposes a "sensory-emotional-cognitivesocial" closed-loop model, emphasizing that immersive experience is not merely an immediate sensory and affective response, but a continuously evolving socio-cultural construction process accompanied by identity formation, cultural association, and collective interaction.