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CALL FOR PAPERS
"Participations and Behavior in Virtual Worlds”
Minitrack at 16th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS),
August 12-15, 2010, Lima, Peru.
This minitrack is part of the “Virtual Worlds” track.
Description
A virtual world is an online space where residents are 2D or 3D avatars
representing the reallife player (Reina Yahya et al. 2008). The recent
emergence of social networking
software such as Cyworld, LinkedIn, and Facebook, the virtual world
websites Habbo Hotel and Second Life, and various Massively Mutiplayer
Online Game (MMOGs) websites such as the World of Warcraft implies that
a virtual world is forming humanity’s future. These widespread virtual
worlds suggest that this ‘third place’ -- other than work and home --
is here to stay and has significant business as well as societal impact.
Following the recent emergence of Second Life, set up by Linden Lab,
and further promoted by many real business players such IBM, Microsoft,
Armani, Coco-Cola, and many other industries (Stuart et al. 2008),
business applications of virtual worlds started to appear. Cyworld and
MNOGs actually earned revenues through their business models.
Furthermore, applications of virtual worlds are promising, ranging
from branding and marketing (Hemp 2006; Papagiannidis et al. 2008;
Stuart et al. 2008), business training and education (Brendaet al.
2008), the gaming industry (Jin et al. 2008), and the potential
business model called virtual commerce (Papagiannidis et al. 2008;
Reina Yahya et al. 2008).
As an emerging technology in development, virtual world studies are in
their infancy, especially the behavioral side of virtual world users,
virtual world groups, or the virtual world
as an organization. From the user side, a virtual world is not able to
be sustained or survive without a critical mass of members and their
active participation. The rationale is quite simple: only after the
aggregation of a critical mass of active members can virtual worlds
accumulate invaluable information and diversity to bring benefits or
generate revenue for virtual world organizers (Hagel et al. 1997;
Papagiannidis et al. 2008). At the group level, it must be questioned
how virtual world users behave when acting as a group. What’s more, the
behavior of virtual worlds as an organization is totally new, and the
impact of their behavior on current business organization is unknown.
Questions such as these are beneficial for us to research. In this
sense, most areas of virtual world research, especially virtual world
participation and behavior, are unexplored. Solid theories and
discussions are needed for this new field. This mini-track welcomes
both conceptual and empirical research on virtual world participation
behavior either at the individual, group, or organizational level.
Possible topics
• Specific behavior patterns and characteristics of virtual world users
• Motivation for people to participate in virtual worlds
• Impact of virtual world behavior on virtual world users’ lives and
work
• How virtual worlds behavior change people’s communication process
• Multi-level approach to studying the users’ behavior and
participation in virtual worlds
• Virtual world users’ behavior impact on business applications
• Cultural factors and their impact on virtual world users’ behavior
• Commentaries on specific virtual worlds
• Case studies and ethnography studies of virtual world users’ behavior
• Group and organizational behavior in virtual worlds
• Collaboration behavior in virtual worlds
• Financial behavior in virtual worlds
• Difference and similarity between virtual world behavior and real
life behavior
• Virtual world organization behavior
Mini-Track Chairs:
Honglei Li Swansea University, United Kingdom, h.li@swansea.ac.uk
Kun Chang Lee, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea, margunn@ifi.uio.no
Michael Williams, Swansea University, United Kingdom, m.d.williams@swansea.ac.uk
Submission Process:
Full paper submissions must be made electronically through the AMCIS
online submission system http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/amcis2010.
Papers will be peer-reviewed using a double-blind review system and
will be considered for AMCIS Best Paper Awards.
Key Dates:
- Full papers due: March 1, 2010
- Notification of acceptance: April 12, 2010
- Final copy due: April 26, 2010
You may seek more information at http://www.amcis2010.org/home/.
You are also welcome to contact the mini-track chairs.