-------- Original-Nachricht -------- Betreff: [AISWorld] AMCIS2010 Minitrack Participations and Behavior in Virtual Worlds CFP Datum: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:22:05 +0000 Von: Honglei Li violahl@gmail.com An: aisworld@lists.aisnet.org

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 mailto:h.li@swansea.ac.uk Kun Chang Lee, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea, margunn@ifi.uio.no mailto:margunn@ifi.uio.no Michael Williams, Swansea University, United Kingdom, m.d.williams@swansea.ac.uk mailto: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.