Online Virtual Worlds Research Articles

Factors Influencing Customers’ Apparel Shopping Intention in Metaverse

ABSTRACT The emergence of the metaverse has opened an unbelievable online virtual world offering real-life immersive experiences to consumers. This study examines customers’ fashion apparel shopping intentions in the e-commerce metaverse. We propose a conceptual framework based on behavioral reasoning theory (BRT) to investigate the reasons for the adoption (or not) of the metaverse. The survey of 1170 customers was performed, and PLS-SEM was used to analyze data. The findings suggest that perceived enjoyment, interactivity, imagination, and sense of immersion favors the adoption, whereas perceived risk, traditional barrier, image barrier, and technological anxiety deter metaverse adoption. Our results advance the literature on innovative shopping technology and metaverse fashion apparel shopping intention. We provide guidelines for metaverse marketers and managers.

Exploring Students’ Experiences of Virtual Learning Environment for Art History Classroom

During the Covid 19, students and instructors experienced double-way synchronization distance classes. Recently, the metaverse was drawn much attention to the online virtual world as a channel for social interaction. It has received renewed interest as a new method of surmounting the limitations of external activities after the pandemic. A few studies have focused on the usability of metaverse in a classroom, but no attention was paid to its applicability to Art History as well as to the higher level of education. In order to compensate for the limitations of two-way synchronized remote learning in university art history classes, Gather.Town was adopted as a metaverse platform in both Western modern art history classes and art history methodology classes. In this study, we surveyed and interviewed students who used both WebEx and Gather.Town. This study examines students’ experiences in accessibility, social presence, convenience of interaction, interest and immersion, and satisfaction when the students use the metaverse platform, Gather.Town. The examination of this study confirms that the virtual space of metaverse was more helpful in making students feel a sense of presence, interaction, and engagement than WebEx and demonstrates the possibility of this platform as a sustainable and valid tool in Art History Education.

<em>Roblox</em> and Meta Verch

<em>Roblox</em> and Meta Verch

Designing Tasks through Second Life for CFL Learners in the UK University

The development of technology has brought some alternative means in education. The enabling role of technology has been widely recognized in second language teaching and learning. Second Life (SL) is an online virtual world and is popular with digital natives. Some language educators apply this application to foreign-language teaching in university courses because of its benefits to students’ immersion and focus, imagination, and creativity in language learning. Language learners can immerse themselves in the target language environment to imitate real-world tasks, which promotes the provision of reality-oriented tasks and optimizes task-based language teaching tenets such as learning by doing, authenticity, negotiation of meaning, and exposure to abundant and authentic input. Based on the definition of tasks, the role of SL in foreign-language teaching, and previous pedagogic models and studies on designing tasks with SL, this study proposed two types of SL tasks for Chinese as a foreign-language learner in university settings, along with the rationale behind them. Additionally, challenges in designing tasks in SL were identified. Overall, this study offered valuable insights and guidance for the application of SL in teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages in UK universities.

가상소비 촉진의 영향요인: 게임 가상세계를 중심으로

The development of information and communication technology (ICT) has been promoting virtual consumption, such as purchasing virtual goods in online virtual worlds. One of the representative markets where virtual consumption is prevalent is the game market. In particular, despite the overall decline in the economy due to COVID-19, the number of users and revenue of online games have shown a very high increase. In addition, as the use of digital technology becomes common in everyday life, virtual consumption is very likely to expand in the future, and it is also highly likely to change the existing traditional consumption ecosystem. Therefore, this study focuses on the phenomenon of virtual consumption in games and attempts to verify the main factors affecting the promotion of virtual consumption. This study presents a research model by deriving the influencing factors that reflect the characteristic values that are considered more important in game virtual worlds, in order to analyze the consumption value that affects the behavioral intention of virtual consumption in the game virtual world from multiple aspects. In addition, this study conducts a comparative analysis between Chinese and Korean users to verify whether the influencing factors of virtual consumption differ between user groups in the countries with different social and cultural backgrounds. Based on the analysis results, this study can provide useful implications to those involved in the game and virtual world industries by identifying the main influencing factors on the promotion of virtual consumption phenomenon in the rapidly growing game virtual worlds.

A RCT of a Psychological Health Promotion Program for Women with SCI:Examining Efficacy and Mechanisms

<h3>Research Objectives</h3> To examine the efficacy of a psychological health promotion group intervention for women with SCI and test mechanisms of change. <h3>Design</h3> Two-group (intervention vs. control) by three times of testing (pre, post, follow-up) randomized controlled trial. <h3>Setting</h3> Online virtual world of Second Life (SL). <h3>Participants</h3> A national sample of 175 women with traumatic SCI who were at least one year post-injury. <h3>Interventions</h3> The 10-week group-based Zest intervention was offered in a private parcel of land in SL. Zest participants, represented as avatars, met weekly for 10 weeks. The program featured didactic information, group discussion, action planning, homework activities, and relaxation training. <h3>Main Outcome Measures</h3> We proposed a model in which the effect of the intervention on primary outcomes (Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, PHQ-8, and Satisfaction with Life Scale) at T3 (6 month follow-up) would be mediated by the effect of the intervention on proximal outcomes (Generalized Self-efficacy Scale, Perceived Stress Scale, MOS Social Support Scale) at T2 (post-test). <h3>Results</h3> Results of analyses with Zest program completers indicated that women in the Zest intervention group demonstrated greater improvements from T1 (baseline) to T2 (post-test) than control group participants on measures of self-efficacy, stress, self-esteem, depression, and life satisfaction with improvements maintained from T2 to T3. Intent-to-treat analyses produced similar findings, although group differences in depression were no longer significant. In testing our mediational model, we found self-efficacy fully mediated the effect of the intervention on self-esteem and life satisfaction, while perceived stress fully mediated the effect of the intervention on depression. <h3>Conclusions</h3> Group psychoeducational programs that specifically target self-efficacy enhancement and stress management hold promise for improving psychological health among women with SCI. <h3>Author(s) Disclosures</h3> None.

Why Do Women Pretend to Be Men? Female Gender Swapping in Online Games.

This research explored the influencing factors of gender swapping among female players in online games and their impact on online gaming behavior. Based on an online survey of 3,658 female players in China, we found that perceived benefits and the Tanbi tendency, a psychological indulgence in enjoying novels, comics, or series on love and sex between attractive males, were the most important factors for female players to employ male avatars. Sexual orientation, perceived anonymity, and perceived tolerance also had a significant influence on gender swapping. Different from the practical benefits perceived by men who use female avatars in online games, the perceived benefit for female players who use male avatars was to avoid gender discrimination. In order to obtain more freedom and fairer treatment, they chose male avatars for a better experience. Female players with a higher degree of gender swapping showed a stronger aggressiveness and dominant “hyper-masculinity” behavior tendency in the game. Though online virtual worlds may be a convenient place for females to experience gender equality through gender swapping, the findings of this study suggest that gender swapping in games may, to some extent, perpetuate or even reinforce gender stereotypes in the real world.

Second Life Lessons [Virtual Worlds

This article discusses online virtual worlds and gaming platforms such as Second Life, metaverse platforms and Facebook. Topics include avatars, security, safety and anonymity issues, gaming abilities, VR headsets, game backgrounds, game graphic rendering, and user generated content.

Dimensions of Online Role-Playing: Anchored in the Tolkien Mythos

Based on close study of two multi-player games in the tradition of J. R. R. Tolkien, this study documents the complex features of modern role-playing in online virtual worlds and constructs a six-component typology of its dimensions. The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is oriented toward the popular movies based on Tolkien’s novels, and can be played by as many as three people. The Lord of the Rings Online is based directly on the novels and is massively multi-player, even one event reported here having 487 avatars simultaneously at the same virtual location. A brief sociometric analysis of thousands of online stories in Tolkien’s legendarium, observation inside 20 Tolkien Facebook groups, and references to social science published during Tolkien’s lifetime, anchor the analysis in a tradition. The six theory components interact dynamically: identity, function, connection, engagement, representation, and property. They were derived from participant observation and ethnographic methods, but also illustrated by statistics, notably censuses of avatars and their homesteads. A great number of other role-playing computer games have similar components, but often fewer and less clearly represented. Therefore, this pair in the Tolkien mythos were especially suitable for this concept-development project.

Pivoting Culinary Education During COVID-19 Part Two

This work follows from the article Pivoting Culinary Education During Covid 19 Part 1:Setting the Pedagogic Scene, whereby culinary lecturers from the Food Design Institute, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand, recall their response to the Covid 19 pandemic and the move to online learning. The story starts with New Zealand entering lockdown and the students having only days to return to their hometowns and engage with online learning resources. Student’s initial fears and concerns about the future of their culinary studies are further compounded with media reports about the demise of the hospitality industry. In response to the students’ academic and emotional needs, the lecturers reframe the disruption of Covid 19 as a unique learning opportunity. The lecturers quickly reposition the course to embrace the new possibilities that exist within a new Covid 19 landscape. In doing so, they alleviate student concerns and prepare them for an alternative culinary future. The story focuses a second-year culinary arts project, where students have traditionally worked alongside the local food producers and their respective brand identities to develop new food products. Typically, students design and develop artisanal food offerings that would be found for sale at a local farmers’ market or within bespoke food retailer. However, with every shop and farmers market in New Zealand now closed, the students project learning is refocused, and explores how artisanal food products now interact with customers in a virtual online world. Throughout the course, the lecturers continue to balance the students motivational, social, and academic needs, factors which they know are important in a distance learning environment. This article provides invaluable insights and learnings for culinary educators, who are having to reimagine culinary education in a world of continued lockdown’s and changing consumer purchasing and consumption behaviours.

Distributed Meta-Learning for Context Based on Culture Heritage Collection Data in an Immersive Reality System

This article proposes a new workflow for Culture Heritage (CH) Collection Data in which distributed meta-learning with context-based fusion is required. The multidisciplinary research outlines a new paradigm for collaborative creation of a context- based data fusion CH workflow. Whose criterion restricts the search space to the cultural sector to include multiple other CH object types, texts and predominantly analyzes visualizations of CH object metadata. The approach promotes user-driven content creation and offsets economic models, thereby rewarding creators and performers. In response to these challenges, we propose a framework for bringing about massive and real-time presence and awareness on the Internet through an Internet of Things infrastructure to connect objects, context and intangible assets. We enable an online virtual world that incorporates proximity of pervasive information, objects, people, processes, data and places. Finally, we investigate some new ways to achieve immersive experiences via distributed meta-learning computing and point out the necessity to do more with regard to collaborative interaction creation.

Remedierede iscenesættelser

»Can or should we understand MMORPG as theatrical stagings?« Heinrich asks in the article »Remediated stagings.« With the virtual online worlds Second Life and World of Warcraft as examples Heinrich argues that such worlds should not

Utilising virtual environments for radiation therapy teaching and learning

IntroductionModern radiation therapy undergraduate education comprises the illustration of theoretical, technical concepts in a classroom setting, coupled with the acquisition of practical handling and patient communication skills within the clinical environment. In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the application of virtual environments to education, despite ongoing inconclusive evidence on the use of virtual environments for enhancing student educational achievement. Aim and objectivesThe aim of our research is to evaluate a custom-built 3D virtual radiation oncology department created within Second Life®, an online virtual world, as an alternative to traditional physical classroom-based didactic instruction, in tandem with a Virtual Environment for Radiotherapy Training (VERT) system, for the peer support and training of junior radiation therapy students in their first and second year of undergraduate studies. To achieve this aim, we investigated learning achievement outcomes, knowledge retention over a 2-week time interval and learner self-perceived confidence post-instruction, using both quantitative and qualitative analysis. MethodsInstitutional ethics approval was granted for an exempted review. Participants were currently enrolled undergraduate Year 1 and Year 2 students at our institution. Student participants were randomised into two groups; the control group attended a face-to-face classroom session centred on the illustration of theoretical, technical concepts, while the intervention group attended a virtual classroom session online on Second Life®, where similar content was delivered. Both groups then attended a VERT practical session to acquire practical handling and communication skills in radiation therapy. Upon completion of the sessions, confidence surveys, knowledge-based written and practical assessments were administered to the student participants. ResultsWe found that the instructional session conducted within the custom-built 3D virtual radiation oncology department in Second Life® compared to the traditional didactic classroom setting increased undergraduate Year 1 radiation therapy students’ perceived confidence to a greater extent compared to Year 2 students, in performing radiation therapy treatment procedures. In addition, our findings revealed that overall learning achievement outcomes and knowledge retention scores between Second Life® and non- Second Life® student participants were closely similar and statistically insignificant. Thematic analysis of the confidence survey questionnaires revealed that the students in general desired more clinical hands-on practice. DiscussionSecond Life® is equally effective in disseminating theoretical, technical course content delivery to undergraduate radiation therapy students. The use of virtual environments appears to have increased the perceived confidence of the Year 1 undergraduate students to a greater extent compared to the Year 2 undergraduates, suggesting that the adoption of virtual environments early in the students’ educational journey can have a positive effect on students’ learning experience. Conclusions and RecommendationsThe development and use of our custom-built Second Life® radiation oncology department provides a novel way of delivering remote, virtual training instruction to undergraduate radiation therapy students over traditional, didactic classroom instructional delivery. We recommend, based on the results of this pilot study, that future research can involve a larger study sample of undergraduate RT students, to explore both the short-term and long-term impact of virtual environments on student learning outcomes across their enrolled years of study. This would in turn mean progressive attempts to revamp our existing curricula structure, to deliberately incorporate the use of virtual environments, especially during early undergraduate years, towards enhanced modern RT education.

HeapCraft: Quantifying and Predicting Collaboration in Minecraft

We present Heapcraft: an open-source suite of tools for monitoring and improving collaboration in Minecraft. At the core of our system is a data collection and analysis framework for recording gameplay. We collected over 3451 player-hours of game behavior from 908 different players, and performed a general study of online collaboration. To make our game analytics easily accessible, we developed interactive information visualization tools and an analysis framework for players, administrators, and researchers to explore graphs, maps and timelines of live server activity. As part of our research, we introduce the collaboration index, a metric which allows server administrators and researchers to quantify, predict, and improve collaboration on Minecraft servers. Our analysis reveals several possible predictors of collaboration which can be used to improve collaboration on Minecraft servers. Heapcraft is designed to be general, and has the potential to be used for other shared online virtual worlds.

An Association Rule Mining Approach to Discover Demand and Supply Patterns Based on Thai Social Media Data

In the digital age, social media technology has an important role as a communication platform for interpersonal interactions in the online virtual world. In addition, social media has impacted product exchange behavior in both vendors and buyers, with a shift from the traditional sales model to communication between parties via social media. Social media marketing, an online means of buying, selling, and exchanging goods and services, is increasingly popular due to convenience, speed, and greater choices. This trend has grown rapidly and is set to expand, leading to increased interest in research which analyzes and processes social media marketing data to gain a new integrated body of knowledge to better serve online business transactions. This research covers a new field, which may cause research and development limitations requiring background knowledge in several areas, such as digital technology, data analytics, and business analysis. This research aims to develop a framework to search for association rule mining of demand and supply data on social media platforms. Data is collected from Twitter and underwent cleansing and labeling for separating into five groups. Hashtag data from tweets is then extracted and transformed to input attributes of the framework. Next, association rule mining is performed using the Apriori algorithm in order to determine frequent items and extract candidate association rules. The last stage is rule selection, which uses Twitter-specific statistical attributes, that is, number of retweets and likes, to select highly effective association rules. The findings are that it is possible to mine association rules relating to demand and supply on Twitter. Based on an analysis of the association rule results, the content of those rules reflects trending activities and events at different times. Such information can be analyzed in further research to design improvements in social media marketing.

A Live Speech-Driven Avatar-Mediated Three-Party Telepresence System: Design and Evaluation

AbstractIn this article, we present a live speech-driven, avatar-mediated, three-party telepresence system, through which three distant users, embodied as avatars in a shared 3D virtual world, can perform natural three-party telepresence that does not require tracking devices. Based on live speech input from three users, this system can real-time generate the corresponding conversational motions of all the avatars, including head motion, eye motion, lip movement, torso motion, and hand gesture. All motions are generated automatically at each user side based on live speech input, and a cloud server is utilized to transmit and synchronize motion and speech among different users. We conduct a formal user study to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of the system by comparing it with a well-known online virtual world, Second Life, and a widely-used online teleconferencing system, Skype. The user study results indicate our system can provide a measurably better telepresence user experience than the two widely-used methods.

Note from the Editor

“In many ways, it is hard for modern people living in First World countries to conceive of a pandemic sweeping around the world and killing millions of people, and it is even harder to believe that something as common as influenza could cause such widespread illness and death.” ― Charles River Editors, The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: The History and Legacy of the World’s Deadliest Influenza Outbreak Just over a century ago, the “Spanish Flu Pandemic” had spread over the world and killed millions. We are now living in similar uncertain times, where a pandemic is sweeping around the world, threatening millions, not only their health, but also economic livelihoods. South Africa is in a lockdown, and most researchers and academics are working from home. However, there are a few positive aspects: We are all forced to be a lot more innovative, rescuing our businesses, or delivering the services we are supposed to deliver in different ways. An industrial engineering mindset is a valuable attribute in these times. Most of us have learnt to operate in a virtual on-line world. We have learnt new skills and had set new standards. When all returns to “normal” one day, it will be a different kind of normal, where more of us will be working more hours from home. We have been forced to learn and optimise personal time management, and we have spent more time as families together, balancing these with our work responsibilities. The environment has benefitted with the lesser human activities, and in many areas, wildlife are reappearing, blue skies are visible again, and the stars shine brighter! Despite the uncertain times, this edition contains 13 articles, of which 6 are from international authors outside South Africa. As we went to press with the final edition in 2019 in December, I received the sad news that our founding editor, Prof Paul Kruger, had passed away. This edition therefore contains an Obituary, honouring him in his role, not only as founding editor but also as well-known professor in the field of Industrial Engineering, author of several articles in this journal and a loved mentor for many of us, myself included. If you have suggestions on how we can take this journal forward, please let me know.

Domain Analysis Applied to Online Graffiti Art Image Galleries to Reveal Knowledge Organization Structures Used Within an Outsider Art Community

Domain analysis is useful for examination of individual spheres of intellectual activity, both academic and otherwise, and has been used in the knowledge organization (KO) literature to explore specific communities and uses, including web pornography (Beaudoin and Ménard 2015), virtual online worlds (Sköld, Olle 2015), gourmet cooking (Hartel 2010), healthy eating (McTavish 2015), art studies (Ørom 2003), the Knowledge Organization journal (Guimarães et al. 2013), and domain analysis itself (Smiraglia 2015). The results of domain analyses are useful for the development of controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, ontologies, metadata schemas, and other systems for the documentation, description, and discovery of resources, as well as for knowledge discovery in general (Smiraglia 2015; Hjørland 2017). This research describes a methodology for the elucidation of knowledge organization systems (KOS) currently in use on image websites that document graffiti, graffiti art, and street art around the world.

Resistance and sexuality in virtual worlds: An LGBT perspective

Virtual worlds can provide a safe place for social movements of marginal and oppressed groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). When the virtual safe places are under threat, the inhabitants of a virtual world register protests, which have critical implications for the real-world issues. The nature of emancipatory practices such as virtual protests in the digital realm research remains somewhat under-explored. Specifically, it remains to be seen how the oppressed communities such as LGBT take radical actions in virtual worlds in order to restore the imbalance of power. We conducted a 35-month netnographic study of an LGBT social movement in World of Warcraft. The lead researcher joined the LGBT social movement and data was captured through participant observations, discussion forums, and chat logs. Drawing on the critical theory of Michel Foucault, we present empirical evidence that illuminates emancipatory social movement practices in an online virtual world. The findings suggest that there are complex power relations in a virtual world and, when power balance is disrupted, LGBT players form complex ways to register protests, which invoke strategies to restore order in the virtual fields.

Promoting psychological health in women with SCI: Development of an online self-esteem intervention

BackgroundThere are no known interventions addressing self-esteem in women following spinal cord injury (SCI). ObjectivesTo test the feasibility of an online self-esteem intervention for women with disabilities, as modified for women with SCI. MethodWe conducted a randomized, controlled feasibility test of a self-esteem intervention (N = 21). Participants were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group that received intervention materials at the end of the study. Intervention participants met as avatars for 7 weekly real-time group sessions in Second Life (SL), a free online virtual world. Feasibility indicators were study engagement, acceptability of SL and the intervention, and improvements on measures of psychological health promoting behaviors, social support, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and depression. ResultsIntervention participants (n = 10) were highly engaged, and most described the SL program as more enjoyable and more convenient than in-person programs. All rated the intervention as “good” (n = 4) or “very good” (n = 6), and all 10 rated themselves has having made positive life changes as a result of the program. Intervention participants experienced significantly greater change than controls on two measures of health-promoting behavior (Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile-II Spiritual Growth/Self-actualization; Interpersonal Relations). Examining change in the intervention group using regression analyses, we found medium-to-large effects of the intervention on these behaviors and measures of depression (CESD-10, PHQ-9). The intervention had small effects on remaining measures. ConclusionWe found preliminary support for the feasibility of this modified self-esteem intervention offered in SL. Such programming may help circumvent barriers to community-based psychological services and may improve psychological health.