Determinants of Friendship in Social Networking Virtual Worlds

Chesney, Thomas; Chuah, Swee-Hoon; Hull, Wendy; Hoffmann, Robert; Larner, Jeremy

Abstract

This paper examines the determinants of friendship between two users in a virtual world who are unaware of each other's real identities. Drawing on theories of homophily, heterophily and propinquity, three virtual world behaviours are analysed: avatar appearance, avatar location, and avatar communication. Data are collected on 179 participants interacting in a novel virtual world. The main results show that: (1) avatars did not tend to form friendships with avatars that are similar in appearance to themselves but did tend to form friendships with avatars that are dressed differently from themselves; (2) in terms of location, the closer an avatar stands to other avatars, the more likely the avatar is to receive a friend invitation; and (3) the fewer words an avatar uses in communication, the more likely the avatar is to receive a friend invitation. This paper contributes to theories of virtual world interaction and to using virtual worlds as a data collection platform.

Citation

Chesney, T., Chuah, S., Hull, W., Hoffmann, R., & Larner, J. (2014). Determinants of Friendship in Social Networking Virtual Worlds. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 34, 1397-1416. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.03472

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Publication Date: 2014
• Deposit Date: Mar 4, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: May 1, 2020
• Journal: Communications of the Association for Information Systems
• Publisher: Association for Information Systems
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 34
• Article Number: 72
• Pages: 1397-1416
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.03472
• Keywords: avatar, server log, telemetry, online community, assortativity
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1602289
• Publisher URL: https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol34/iss1/72/
• Related Public URLs: https://espace.curtin.edu.au/bitstream/handle/20.500.11937/26710/199330_118348_Published_version.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y