Support for workspace awareness in educational groupware
CSCL '95 The first international conference on Computer support for collaborative learning
A space based model for user interaction in shared synthetic environments
INTERCHI '93 Proceedings of the INTERCHI '93 conference on Human factors in computing systems
Social interaction in virtual enviroments: key issues, common themes, and a framework for research
The social life of avatars
Meeting others—supporting situation awareness on the WWW
Decision Support Systems - Decision-making and E-commerce systems
Computer Supported Cooperative Work
Toward a more robust theory and measure of social presence: review and suggested criteria
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
The AWARE architecture: supporting context-mediated social awareness in mobile cooperation
CSCW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Why do people play on-line games? an extended TAM with social influences and flow experience
Information and Management
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
Flow in games (and everything else)
Communications of the ACM
Pervasive game flow: understanding player enjoyment in pervasive gaming
Computers in Entertainment (CIE) - Interactive entertainment
A spatial model of interaction in large virtual environments
ECSCW'93 Proceedings of the third conference on European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work
Reconceptualizing System Usage: An Approach and Empirical Test
Information Systems Research
ICONS '07 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Systems
ACM SIGMIS Database
Team collaboration in virtual worlds
ACM SIGMIS Database
3D Social Virtual Worlds: Research Issues and Challenges
IEEE Internet Computing
Human-Computer Interaction
Information Systems Research
Research Note---Awareness Displays and Social Motivation for Coordinating Communication
Information Systems Research
Virtual worlds - past, present, and future: New directions in social computing
Decision Support Systems
Information Systems Journal
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Virtual worlds or three-dimensional computer-based simulated environments have received considerable attention as platforms for entertainment, education and commerce. In contrast to a web site, for example, where a user interacts with a two-dimensional site, virtual worlds provide a platform in which users can interact with other individuals, sometimes including strangers, within three-dimensional environments. Virtual worlds afford a form of ‘socialness’ unlike many other technologies, often motivating a user – by virtue of these social experiences – to return. Drawing on the Spatial Model of Interaction and Awareness-Attention Theory, we demonstrate that besides social aspects, which include social awareness and social perception, flow experience, which is the mental state of being fully absorbed and somewhat lost in time, is an essential ingredient in an individual's decision to return to a virtual world. We also demonstrate how characteristics of the technology are linked to the social aspects experienced in virtual worlds. A laboratory study conducted in a virtual world, Second Life, supports our assertions and identifies state predictors of flow that influence individuals' intentions to return to the virtual world environment. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.