Uncovering the Motives for the Continuous Use of Social Virtual Worlds

Social virtual worlds (SVWs) have become increasingly important environments for social interaction, especially for the younger generations. For SVWs to be economically sustainable, attracting new users and retaining the existing ones existing users is a paramount issue. This calls for understanding of the reasons why people engage in social virtual worlds. This study investigates the motives for continuously engagement in SVWs and develops a research model grounded on the decomposed theory of planned behavior. The model is empirically tested with a data collected from Canadian active Habbo goers using PLS. Surprisingly, perceived behavioral control and subjective norm were found more important determinants of continuous use intention than attitude. The results indicated that hedonic motives were the main determinant of attitude. However, altogether only 21.9 % of attitude was explained by utilitarian, hedonic and social outcomes. As a result, the study revealed that rather relying on generic items in measuring attitude and the beliefs regarding the utilitarian and social outcomes, the characteristics of SVW context should be reflected in the operationalisations of the constructs

Digital Natives’ Purchasing Behavior in Habbo Hotel

Purchasing virtual products and services in virtual worlds is a rapidly growing form of online consumer behavior, especially among the digital natives. The paper examines why teens spend real money in virtual goods and services. We empirically investigate the reasons for virtual purchasing behavior in world‟s most popular social virtual world, Habbo Hotel. Using content analysis, we classify the reasons for purchasing into four higher order gratifications, namely elevated experience, hedonic and social factors as well as functional activities. The results demonstrate that virtual purchasing is a vehicle for enhancing and customizing the valued aspects in the user experience

“Fun and Friends and Stuff” On the Stickiness of Social Virtual Worlds among Teenagers

Social Virtual Worlds (SVW) on the Internet have become increasingly popular during the past decade. Largely unnoticed by Information Systems research, Habbo Hotel, which focuses in teenage users, has advanced to become the largest SVW, boasting ten times more users than Second Life. Despite their increasing usage, business potential and societal impact, limited prior research has focused on understanding the factors that drive users to participate in SVWs. Our case study uses a largely quantitative, hypotheses-testing design to uncover the factors behind continuous SVW participation in Habbo Hotel. A research model is developed from prior IS adoption literature and tested with a sample of 844 German Habbo users using PLS. We substantiate our analysis with a qualitative examination of the reasons reported by the users. Our findings illustrate that Habbo use is driven by the stickiness of the platform, i.e. factors intrinsic to Habbo rather than external social pressure. Users engage in the SVW because of what they gain inside, not what they gain in the ‘real’ world, nor because of other people’s opinions. The qualitative analysis reveals that social experimenting is a common behavior displayed by teenagers in the virtual world. We discuss implications for IS research and practice

Virtual Worlds in Education - A systematic Literature Review

Virtual worlds (VWs) are no novum in higher education but regain interest through COVID-19 restrictions, emerging technologies, and the metaverse hype. Therefore, we conduct a systematic literature review to gain the current status quo of research in higher and further education to identify the educational activities, research areas, learning environments, technologies towards the metaverse, subjects taught, and the current state of design knowledge. The initially found 587 records were systematically filtered to 89 fully coded articles. Based on our results, we define research gaps and derive research streams. Our results reveal a lack of research on social integration, course design, non-technical target groups, theoretical grounding and general design knowledge within the given context. The metaverse trend has reached educational research in the way that from 2016 onwards, new technologies are investigated selectively for educational purposes

Joining, participating in and withdrawing from a social networking site

PhD ThesisThis thesis contributes to our understanding of the user behaviour on social networking sites by studying the users’ life cycle. More specifically, it examines the motivations for the three key stages of this cycle - namely joining, participating and withdrawing. Previous literature on the topic puts strong emphasis on the participation stage, typically focusing on general purpose SNS, such as Facebook and Myspace. As a result, there is a dearth of research on the other two stages of the life cycle. Also, there are only a few studies on specific purpose or niche networks. Attending to these gaps, this study’s research questions explore the main motivations that drive a person to join, participate and close their account in an SNS. The work on both the first two stages, i.e. the study of joining and participating in niche SNS, is based on the Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour, and the Uses and Gratifications Theory respectively, using Structural Equation Modelling in both cases. In order to gain more detailed insight into user withdrawal, a different strategy was adopted that was based on a qualitative data collection that was analysed quantitatively using Social Network Analysis. The theoretical framework was informed by Social Identity Theory, using the disidentification concept to explain user withdrawal. The data collected for the research comes from primary sources, having SNS users as a sample frame for the first two stages and former SNS users for the last one. Consistent with the methodology proposed, the data was collected using online questionnaires for the research on joining and participation and laddered interviews for withdrawal. The findings show that for a user to join an SNS it is important to perceive the SNS as easy to use, yet novel enough to make it look different from existing networks. Regarding participation in niche SNS, the research identified the importance of networking gratification, as well as the social support that users can receive through these networks. Likewise, people participate in niche SNS to search for information related to the purpose of the network, which is linked to the learning gratification sought by the users. Lastly, users withdraw from a social network due to issues relating to impression management, as well as looking to regain control of the image they want to project online.Colfuturo for their financial support, covering the fees and part of the living expense

Social media enabled collaborative learning environments: a design science research approach

Collaborative technologies such as Group Decision Support Systems were proclaimed to be able to impact the learning environments of educational institutions twenty years ago, where the Information Systems discipline was interested in determining whether they were capable of transforming the traditional methods of teaching. It was understood that these technologies were effective at transforming learning environments from a traditional approach to a collaborative one, where the learner is part of the learning process, but little has actually changed in this time. However, new generations of these collaborative technologies often emerge, and the platforms of social media are one such technology. In a similar fashion to previous collaborative technologies, social media have been proclaimed as impacting the learning environments of educational institutions through better communication and collaboration, in new and exciting ways. However, a problem that has been identified is there is a lack of understanding on whether the platforms that are enabled by social media are effective at enabling collaborative learning. This study helps improve this understanding. A design science research (DSR) approach was adopted to build an evaluation framework to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of social media enabled collaborative learning environments (SMECLEs). The evaluation framework was developed during a five year DSR study, over six design cycles. These incorporated insights from existing literature on DSR, social media, and collaborative learning, using 272 journal and conference articles. Further, data was gathered from six SMECLEs, which consisted of 857 tweets, 1439 blog posts, and 3376 blog comments. The resulting framework was then used to evaluate the six SMECLEs, where a number of trends were identified, which suggests that the tool is effective for its intended purpose. Thus, the primary contribution of this study, to both practice and the knowledge base, is the evaluation framework for social media enabled collaborative learning environments (SMECLEs)