TY - GEN
T1 - Attributions of human-avatar relationship closeness in a virtual community
AU - Zhao, Yi
AU - Wang, Weiquan
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - As avatars have become increasingly used in virtual communities (VCs) to provide users with a more natural and favorable online experience, promoting a close human-avatar relationship has been a necessity to the sustainable development of VCs. In this study, we intend to explore users' attributions of human-avatar relationship closeness in VCs. We conceptualize human-avatar relationship closeness as composed of activity diversity, interaction frequency, and relational influence, and identify its antecedents (i.e., perceived needs fulfillment, irreplaceableness, resource investment) by extending theories in an interpersonal domain into a human-artifact interaction domain. The hypothesized model is empirically tested through an online survey in the specific context of Second Life (SL), a popular virtual community (VC), and we find that people's perceived needs fulfillment has positive effects on relational influence, perceived relationship irreplaceableness has positive effects on activity diversity and relational influence, while perceived resource investment positively associates with all three dimensions of human-avatar relationship closeness. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
AB - As avatars have become increasingly used in virtual communities (VCs) to provide users with a more natural and favorable online experience, promoting a close human-avatar relationship has been a necessity to the sustainable development of VCs. In this study, we intend to explore users' attributions of human-avatar relationship closeness in VCs. We conceptualize human-avatar relationship closeness as composed of activity diversity, interaction frequency, and relational influence, and identify its antecedents (i.e., perceived needs fulfillment, irreplaceableness, resource investment) by extending theories in an interpersonal domain into a human-artifact interaction domain. The hypothesized model is empirically tested through an online survey in the specific context of Second Life (SL), a popular virtual community (VC), and we find that people's perceived needs fulfillment has positive effects on relational influence, perceived relationship irreplaceableness has positive effects on activity diversity and relational influence, while perceived resource investment positively associates with all three dimensions of human-avatar relationship closeness. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
KW - Human-avatar relationship
KW - Human-computer interaction
KW - Relationship closeness
KW - Second Life
KW - Virtual community
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/56649105019
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/pubmetrics.uri?eid=2-s2.0-56649105019&origin=recordpage
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-540-87781-3_7
DO - 10.1007/978-3-540-87781-3_7
M3 - RGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)
SN - 3540877800
SN - 9783540877806
VL - 5288 LNAI
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 61
EP - 69
BT - Emerging Technologies and Information Systems for the Knowledge Society
PB - Springer Verlag
T2 - 1st World Summit on the Knowledge Society, WSKS 2008
Y2 - 24 September 2008 through 26 September 2008
ER -