Measuring virtual wealth in virtual worlds

Authors:
Jingzhi Guo;Zhiguo Gong
Affiliations:
Department of Computer and Information Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Pereira, S.J., Taipa, Macau;Department of Computer and Information Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Pereira, S.J., Taipa, Macau
Venue:
Information Technology and Management
Year:
2011

Citing 9
Cited 1

Accountability in Electronic Commerce Protocols

IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Designing for accountability

Proceedings of the second Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction
The Wealth of Nations

The Wealth of Nations
Second Life and the New Generation of Virtual Worlds

Computer
Collaborative conceptualisation: towards a conceptual foundation of interoperable electronic product catalogue system design

Enterprise Information Systems
Virtual Money Systems: A Phenomenal Analysis

CECANDEEE '08 Proceedings of the 2008 10th IEEE Conference on E-Commerce Technology and the Fifth IEEE Conference on Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce and E-Services
Virtual worlds - past, present, and future: New directions in social computing

Decision Support Systems
Sign-Based Semantics-Enriched Social Computing

CEC '10 Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Commerce and Enterprise Computing
Virtual wealth protection through virtual money exchange

Electronic Commerce Research and Applications

Social media-based systems: an emerging area of information systems research and practice

Scientometrics

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This article presents pioneering research on measuring virtual wealth in an open virtual world for diagnosing the health of virtual worlds. It proved the existence of an open virtual world by proving the existence of a free choice of virtual currencies for virtual goods between distinct virtual worlds. By discussing the features of open virtual world in a circled networked organization, the article devised a virtual wealth measuring scheme, called Gross Virtual Product (GVP), for any virtual world. Based on this scheme, it suggested an accountability matrix to account for a changing virtual world regarding its total virtual wealth, profitability, user participation and happiness. To demonstrate the suitability of GVP scheme and accountability matrix, the article has conducted a case study on SecondLife.com, which showed the appropriateness of the proposed scheme and matrix. The research made in this article is very important. The proposed measuring scheme and matrix help virtual world participants perceive the possible risks of the participated virtual worlds in advance to make better decisions on virtual business.