Higher Social Presence Research Articles

Translating virtual product scarcity in gaming to real‐world brand value

AbstractThis study explores how the scarcity of virtual products in virtual gaming spaces influences brand evaluation in the real world. While previous studies suggest that scarcity in virtual spaces can enhance brand value, the mechanisms and conditions under which this effect occurs (e.g., the characteristics of virtual spaces, consumer traits, and stimulus). Drawing on insights from scarcity research on physical products, we propose that the effects of scarcity may stem from the expectation of impression management. We developed a model that incorporates insights from physical product scarcity research with the unique aspects of virtual spaces and consumer characteristics. Through four studies, we discovered that the effect of supply scarcity in enhancing brand evaluation is pronounced when the space is online and when consumers have a high level of social presence. Furthermore, in cases where social presence is not high, encounters with others wearing scarce products were found to enhance the scarcity effect. Companies can enhance brand evaluation by strategically using virtual product scarcity in online gaming, particularly when targeting consumers with high social presence or creating opportunities for players to interact with others wearing scarce items.

Under the Radar or Into the Spotlight: How Does Social Presence Affect Minorities in Virtual Groups?

As society has become more reliant on information and communication technologies (ICTs), ICTs have become more adept at supporting social presence. Social presence is the extent to which a medium facilitates awareness of other people and relationships; this is generally considered desirable, but what are the limits to its enhancing effects? Paradoxically, social presence humanizes ICT-mediated interactions, which can lead to more socially conscious behaviors, but it can also trigger pre-existing social biases. We explore the potential unintended consequences of social presence for minority group members-members who are especially vulnerable to stereotyping and discriminatory behavior. Our lab study of 178 groups across three conditions revealed that minority group members were subject to more negative treatment. In turn, minority members responded more negatively when using ICTs with higher social presence. These findings have implications for minority members of virtual groups at work, school, and other social interactions.

Understanding the effect of a virtual moderator on people’s perception in remote discussion using social VR

Social VR enables people to join a remote discussion by keeping a high social presence and physical proximity using embodied avatars. However, the missing nonverbal cues, such as mutual eye contact and nuanced facial expression, make it challenging for distributed members to manage turn-taking, which could lead to unequal participation and affect trust building. Therefore, we propose a virtual moderator to make distributed members feel included by seeing their nonverbal behavior. The virtual moderator was designed with a “prompt Q&A″ feature to enable users to share feedback and an “attention guidance” feature to encourage participation. The preliminary result of a controlled experiment in social VR with 30 participants showed that seeing the virtual moderator’s body orientation enhanced participants’ psychological safety. In contrast, the prompt Q&A feature enhanced the perceived co-presence of their remote counterparts. We discussed how nonverbal behavior could be designed using a virtual moderator to shape human perception of the group discussion in social VR. We also pointed out challenges when providing multiple supports simultaneously in social VR.

From 2D to 3D video conferencing: modular RGB-D capture and reconstruction for interactive natural user representations in immersive extended reality (XR) communication

With recent advancements in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) hardware, many new immersive Extended Reality (XR) applications and services arose. One challenge that remains is to solve the social isolation often felt in these extended reality experiences and to enable a natural multi-user communication with high Social Presence. While a multitude of solutions exist to address this issue with computer-generated “artificial” avatars (based on pre-rendered 3D models), this form of user representation might not be sufficient for conveying a sense of co-presence for many use cases. In particular, for personal communication (for example, with family, doctor, or sales representatives) or for applications requiring photorealistic rendering. One alternative solution is to capture users (and objects) with the help of RGBD sensors to allow real-time photorealistic representations of users. In this paper, we present a complete and modular RGBD capture application and outline the different steps needed to utilize RGBD as means of photorealistic 3D user representations. We outline different capture modalities, as well as individual functional processing blocks, with its advantages and disadvantages. We evaluate our approach in two ways, a technical evaluation of the operation of the different modules and two small-scale user evaluations within integrated applications. The integrated applications present the use of the modular RGBD capture in both augmented reality and virtual reality communication application use cases, tested in realistic real-world settings. Our examples show that the proposed modular capture and reconstruction pipeline allows for easy evaluation and extension of each step of the processing pipeline. Furthermore, it allows parallel code execution, keeping performance overhead and delay low. Finally, our proposed methods show that an integration of 3D photorealistic user representations into existing video communication transmission systems is feasible and allows for new immersive extended reality applications.

Lockdown loneliness and social media compulsive use during the COVID-19 pandemic in China: A serial mediation model

During the COVID-19 epidemic, social media was the main way for people to communicate with others. While social media brings convenience to all people, it also has its dark side. This study examined the link between the psychological characteristics of the general public at the time of blockade and compulsive social media behavior based on the I-PACE theory and compensatory internet use theory. During the first outbreak of COVID-19, 416 participants between the ages of 18 and 40 in China were recruited using an online survey in social media platform for this research. Findings highlight that users who feel high loneliness may tend to use social media compulsively. Results also indicated that social interaction anxiety and FoMO serially mediate the link between lockdown loneliness and compulsive use. This research demonstrated that higher social presence could increase lonely users’ tendency of compulsive use. Higher social presence can improve the risk of compulsive social media usage when individuals in FoMO state. During the COVID-19 pandemic, individual in higher boredom proneness may positively affect the association between lockdown loneliness and compulsive use. The results can provide a potential way to understand compulsive social media usage and prevent individuals’ negative emotions from contributing to unhealthy social media usage. The results of this study provide a range of references for social media users, social media platform providers, and governments to use social media effectively and sustainably during the global COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic period.

Social Presence Online Tutoring: A study of Peer Effect Mechanism

The purpose of this study is to analyze whether Social Presence affects students' learning completeness in distance learning? at the University of PGRI Argopuro Jember (N = 600), the assessment was measured by Grade-Point Average (GPA). Data, obtained from variables consisting of: variable composition of students, class environment and the average value of students. Previous research has stated that Social Presence affects positive attitudes that have an impact on student learning mastery. It was found that the effect of learning enthusiasm that affects learning success with a high GPA difference was found. Students with high social presence get a complete average score in all of their competencies. The results show that the effects that influence students on the composition of Social Presence and frame factors are class composition, student interaction, and teacher interaction.

A predictive study of students’ social presence and their interconnectivities in the social network interaction of online discussion board

Effective online interaction is beyond interacting with whomever. The quality of social interconnectivity matters. Social presence plays a vital role in building an effective online learning community. This study empirically examined: how online social presence will predict various aspects of students’ social interconnectivities (i.e., in-degree, out-degree, betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality, reciprocated vertex pair ratio, & PageRank) in the social network of discussion board within an online course? The predictive utility of social presence for all social network interconnectivity was supported, but reciprocated vertex pair ratio, so-called two-way interconnectivity was not. Social presence serves as a strong predictor for social interaction and interconnectivity. Learners with higher social presence are more likely to play distinguished roles of influencer, liaison, transmitter, social strategist, and prestigious figure of a community of learners. The findings would support online instructors to facilitate, guide, and support their students to navigate through the convoluted social interconnectivity effectively and continuously.

Students’ Perception of Social Presence in Facebook

Acquiring social presence promotes the degree of salience between two people using communication medium and development of interpersonal relationship. Nonetheless, research on social presence elements in social network system, such as Facebook, normally focuses on Facebook as general; considerably less is known about the relation between specific activities in Facebook towards the five dimensions in social presence: social respect, social sharing, social identity, open mind, and intimacy. Hence, this study uncovered students’ perception of online social presence with relation to their experience, average time spent per day and activities done in Facebook by utilizing the questionnaire adapted from the study by Sung and Mayer (2012). The respondents of this study were a group of students who have similar experience of participating in academic discussion in Facebook on computer subject. Two-ways communication in Facebook, as in chatting, commenting, and sending message correlated positively with all dimensions in social presence. Those Facebook usages are also most frequently used by students, along with several other activities that signify students’ interests to acknowledge themselves with any update or news from the society they choose as Facebook friends. Students might have regularly encountered with social presence instances through their vast experience on using Facebook with major usage of more than 2 years and minimum average of 1 hour per day. Hence, that could justify the high social presence the respondents believe they have perceived. These findings suggest that Facebook can be considered as a promising platform to utilize social presence to the most if the availability of its various tools and activities that support social interaction are put into the best practice to nurture student’s social presence in online learning.

‘Should I Turn on My Video Camera?’ The Students’ Perceptions of the use of Video Cameras in Synchronous Distant Learning

One of the challenges teachers and students face in online synchronous learning is not turning on their video cameras. The reasons are multitasking, being concerned about the background, psychological barriers, and poor internet connection. In this study, social presence theory (SPT) was employed as the theoretical lens to understand the possible impacts of video cameras in synchronous online learning. Social presence allows individuals to make personal characteristics visible to the community. Students experience greater levels of trust and rapport because of verbal and nonverbal cues that occur when video cameras are turned on in video conferencing. The use of video cameras in synchronous distant learning creates intimacy and immediacy, leading to teacher–learner social presence, which leads to dialog. The phenomenographic study was carried out to analyze the students’ perceptions of the phenomena. The eighty-two first-year undergraduate and doctoral students took part in the study. It showed that students perceive a video camera as a tool for cooperation, as well as for self-discipline and self-control. The students relate the use of video cameras with quality studies, the ability to interact, and to be a part of the process. They feel less inclined to participate when their cameras are off. That leads to the weaker student–teacher relationship, which is achieved with a higher social presence. It is essential to see one other to strengthen students’ motivation, sense of belonging, and community in the courses for first-year students who are still developing learning habits and social networks.

Quantifying determinants of social conformity in an online debating website

Social conformity is the act of individuals adjusting their personal opinions to agree with an opposing majority. Previous work has identified multiple determinants of social conformity in controlled laboratory studies, but they remain largely untested in naturalistic online environments. For this study, we developed a realistic debating website, which 48 participants used for one week. We deployed four versions of the website using a 2 (high vs. low social presence) x 2 (high vs. low emphasis on majority–minority group composition) between-subjects factorial design. We found that participants were significantly more likely to conform when the platform promotes high social presence, despite its emphasis on group composition. Our qualitative findings further reveal how different aspects of social presence embedded in platform design (i.e., user representation, interactivity, and response visibility) contribute to heightened conformity behaviour. Our results provide evidence of the organic manifestation of conformity in online groups discussing subjective content and confirm the effect of platform design on online conformity behaviour. We conclude with a discussion on the implications of our findings on how future online platforms can be designed accounting for conformity influences.

How chatbots' social presence communication enhances consumer engagement: the mediating role of parasocial interaction and dialogue

PurposeThis study presents one of the earliest empirical investigations on how brand chatbots' anthropomorphic design and social presence communication strategies may improve consumer evaluation outcomes via the mediators of parasocial interaction and perceived dialogue.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a 2 (high vs. low social presence communication) by 2 (anthropomorphic vs. non-anthropomorphic bot profile) between-subject experimental design to evaluate how chatbots' high social presence communication and anthropomorphic profile design may enhance perceptions of parasocial interactions and dialogue with the chatbot, which in turn drive user engagement, interaction satisfaction and attitude toward the represented brand.FindingsThe influences of chatbots' high social presence communication on consumer engagement outcomes are mediated by perceived parasocial interaction and dialogue. Additionally, chatbots' anthropomorphic profile design can boost the positive effects of social presence communication via the psychological mediators.Originality/valueThis study advances the interactive marketing literature by focusing on an emerging interactive technology, chatbots. Additionally, distinct from prior chatbot studies that focused on the utilitarian use of chatbots for online customer support, this study not only examines which factors of chatbot communication and profile design may drive chatbot effectiveness but also examines the mechanism underlying the messaging and design effects on consumer engagement. The findings highlight the mediating role of interpersonal factors of parasocial interaction and perceived dialogue.

Keeping up with influencers: exploring the impact of social presence and parasocial interactions on Instagram

An experiment was conducted to examine the level of social presence and the mediating role of parasocial interaction in influencer marketing. In a simulated fitness influencer’s Instagram posts, social presence significantly predicts individuals’ purchase intent toward the brand featured in the posts as well as self-efficacy, working through parasocial interactions. Parasocial interaction with influencers serves as a mediator, while influencers can act as role models to motivate people to take action and benefit the brand by encouraging consumers to purchase the products featured in their posts. Higher social presence in the posts led individuals to feel that the posts were less promotional. The effect of parasocial interaction was moderated by advertising recognition, such that lower social presence posts appeared to suggest a promotional appeal and negatively affected purchase intent. Thus, social presence and parasocial interaction are key predictors of successful influencer marketing, yet they can pose a concern because they may hinder consumers from developing accurate persuasion knowledge.

Exploring interaction techniques for 360 panoramas inside a 3D reconstructed scene for mixed reality remote collaboration

Remote collaboration using mixed reality (MR) enables two separated workers to collaborate by sharing visual cues. A local worker can share his/her environment to the remote worker for a better contextual understanding. However, prior techniques were using either 360 video sharing or a complicated 3D reconstruction configuration. This limits the interactivity and practicality of the system. In this paper we show an interactive and easy-to-configure MR remote collaboration technique enabling a local worker to easily share his/her environment by integrating 360 panorama images into a low-cost 3D reconstructed scene as photo-bubbles and projective textures. This enables the remote worker to visit past scenes on either an immersive 360 panoramic scenery, or an interactive 3D environment. We developed a prototype and conducted a user study comparing the two modes of how 360 panorama images could be used in a remote collaboration system. Results suggested that both photo-bubbles and projective textures can provide high social presence, co-presence and low cognitive load for solving tasks while each have its advantage and limitations. For example, photo-bubbles are good for a quick navigation inside the 3D environment without depth perception while projective textures are good for spatial understanding but require physical efforts.

Investigating the effects of beat and deictic gestures of a lecturer in educational videos

Lecturers in educational videos often use gestures to emphasize what has been said or highlight learning relevant information, which is visible on the screen. However, differences in types of lecturer gestures, such as rhythmic (beat) gestures and signaling (deictic) gestures, have not been investigated thoroughly yet concerning human lecturers in educational videos. In two experiments (N1 = 108; N2 = 121), participants received an educational video about weather phenomena (Experiment 1) or the industrial revolution (Experiment 2). Videos were manipulated in terms of the type of lecturer's gestures in the video (beat gestures vs. deictic gestures vs. no gestures). Learning outcomes, mental load and effort, parasocial interaction, social presence, affective rating, and agent-persona perception (Experiment 2) were measured. Results indicated a significant effect of gestures on retention performance in both experiments. In line with the signaling principle, deictic gestures enhanced learning outcomes. In contrast, beat gestures did not foster learning in comparison with a video without gestures. These results are interpreted considering lower mental load, higher social presence, and parasocial interaction in the signaling condition. In particular, attention towards the lecturer was significantly enhanced in the condition with deictic gestures in both experiments.

Understanding Users’ Engagement and Responses in 3D Virtual Reality: The Influence of Presence on User Value

AbstractVirtual reality (VR) provides new opportunities for businesses to gain competitive advantages by enabling them to innovatively engage customers. Based on presence theory, this study aims to test the influences of two major components of presence, social presence and spatial presence, on users’ perceptions of hedonic value, utilitarian value and engagement in the VR environment. An experiment was conducted on two conditions of a VR application (low vs. high social presence) to test the hypotheses proposed in the research model. The results reveal that social presence and spatial presence can improve the hedonic value of VR. However, inconsistent with previous studies, our findings reveal a negative relationship between spatial presence and engagement. Theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are subsequently discussed.

Discovering MOOC learner motivation and its moderating role

ABSTRACT In massive open online courses (MOOCs), learners have diverse types of motivation. Learners with different motivations have different interaction behaviours, presence, and learning outcomes. However, scant research has investigated the moderating role of learner motivations in the associations between presence and learning outcomes. This study examined MOOC learner motivation and its moderating role by surveying 646 MOOC learners. By exploratory factor analysis, this study identified four types of motivation: interest in knowledge, curiosity and expansion, connection and recognition, and professional relevance. Based on motivation, the study clustered learners into high-motivation, low-motivation, and asocial learners. Both high-motivation and asocial learners reported strong interest in knowledge and professional relevance, but asocial learners reported the lowest level of connection and recognition among the three groups of learners. Despite the low social presence, the asocial learners still had high levels of cognitive and teaching presence and learning outcomes. In addition, learners with higher presence generally perceived higher cognitive learning, but asocial learners with higher social presence were less satisfied. The results highlight the impacts of specific types of motivation to enrol in MOOCs and suggest designing different environments for learners with different motivation types.

The relationship between social presence and cognitive load

PurposeAs online learning has become more prevalent, how learners interact with each other in those learning environments has become more salient. To develop effective levels of interaction, students must feel comfortable to express their ideas and views. For this reason, this paper aims to look at how individual students’ levels of social presence affect germane cognitive load. Germane cognitive load is the amount that students are able to construct schema and can be seen as analogous to learning.Design/methodology/approachThis study looks at the results of survey data (n = 433) that investigate the relationship between social presence and germane cognitive load. The students were surveyed from the Open Cyber University of Korea in the fall semester of 2018.FindingsThe present study found a statistically significant positive relationship between social presence and germane cognitive load. The study found a Spearman’s correlation coefficient of 0.595. Furthermore, the sample was divided into a high, medium and low grouping of social presence. Among these groupings, the high level social presence had the highest level of germane cognitive load, and the low level social presence had the lowest level of germane cognitive load.Originality/valueThis result shows the importance and value of developing levels of social presence in online environments. Some research has shown relationships between student interaction and learning, but the present study looks directly at social presence and germane cognitive load. From this research, the authors can see the value of encouraging higher levels of social interaction in online learning environments.

ON THE NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL PRESENCE IN ONLINE COURSE DISCUSSIONS

“Social presence,” the degree to which participants in computer-mediated communication feel affectively connected one to another, has been shown to be an important factor in student satisfaction and success in online courses. This mixed methods study built on previous research to explore in greater depth the nature of social presence and how it develops in online course discussions. The study combined quantitative analyses of survey results from students enrolled in four online graduate courses, and qualitative comparisons of students with the highest and lowest perceptions of social presence. Quantitative results revealed significant correlations between perceived social presence and satisfaction with online discussions, and teased apart the respective influences of the perceived presence of instructors and peers. The findings indicate that the perceived presence of instructors may be a more influential factor in determining student satisfaction than the perceived presence of peers. Correlations with other course and learner characteristics suggest that course design may also significantly affect the development of social presence. Qualitative findings support the quantitative results. In addition, they provide evidence that students perceiving the highest social presence also projected themselves more into online discussions,and reveal meaningful differences in perceptions of the usefulness and purpose of online discussion between students perceiving high and low social presence.

Customer experience challenges: bringing together digital, physical and social realms

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore innovations in customer experience at the intersection of the digital, physical and social realms. It explicitly considers experiences involving new technology-enabled services, such as digital twins and automated social presence (i.e. virtual assistants and service robots).Design/methodology/approachFuture customer experiences are conceptualized within a three-dimensional space – low to high digital density, low to high physical complexity and low to high social presence – yielding eight octants.FindingsThe conceptual framework identifies eight “dualities,” or specific challenges connected with integrating digital, physical and social realms that challenge organizations to create superior customer experiences in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. The eight dualities are opposing strategic options that organizations must reconcile when co-creating customer experiences under different conditions.Research limitations/implicationsA review of theory demonstrates that little research has been conducted at the intersection of the digital, physical and social realms. Most studies focus on one realm, with occasional reference to another. This paper suggests an agenda for future research and gives examples of fruitful ways to study connections among the three realms rather than in a single realm.Practical implicationsThis paper provides guidance for managers in designing and managing customer experiences that the authors believe will need to be addressed by the year 2050.Social implicationsThis paper discusses important societal issues, such as individual and societal needs for privacy, security and transparency. It sets out potential avenues for service innovation in these areas.Originality/valueThe conceptual framework integrates knowledge about customer experiences in digital, physical and social realms in a new way, with insights for future service research, managers and public policy makers.

Fostering online learning at the workplace: A scheme to identify and analyse collaboration processes in asynchronous discussions

AbstractResearch has shown that providing participants with high‐quality learning material is not sufficient to help them profit most from online education. The level of interaction among participants is another key determinant for learning outcomes. However, merely proposing interaction does not automatically lead to fruitful discussion and collaboration. Specifically, social presence and facilitation activities add value to online discussions. In Murphy's collaboration framework, social presence represents the basis of successful online collaboration from which more reflective discussions and co‐construction can evolve. In this paper, an adjusted version of this framework was applied in a workplace learning context. The content analysis of 1170 comments in an online course for careers practitioners of a public employment service showed that the extended framework generated deeper insights into the dynamics of online discussions. The results show that involvement in collaborative learning at the workplace was supported by a high social presence and influenced by course topic and tasks. Facilitation played an important role in creating a sympathetic sense of community and stimulating co‐creation processes.