USERS’ PERSONALITY TRAITS IN THE CONTEXT
OF VIRTUAL REALITY
Ioannis G. Krasonikolakis, Adam P. Vrechopoulos and Athanasia Pouloudi
Department of Management Science and Technology, Athens University of Economics and Business
76 Patission Str., 10434 Athens, Greece
Keywords: Purpose of Internet Use, Virtual Reality, e-Commerce, User/Consumer Behaviour.
Abstract: The purpose of using the internet has been thoroughly studied in the context of “traditional” web. This
exploratory study aims to illustrate the profile of users visiting Virtual Worlds (VWs) through the Web. The
findings confirm VWs’ social origin and highlight entertainment as one of the most attractive purposes of
entering to this virtual world. The study also contributes to our understanding of virtual reality retailing
dynamics and sets the further research agenda.
1 INTRODUCTION
In Virtual Worlds (VWs), users from all over the
world can interact within a rich multimedia three-
dimensional environment. Participants in these
worlds can engage in socialization, information
search, entertainment, education, and e-commerce
activities. In order to better understand user
behaviour in the context of VWs, the objective of
the present study is to profile user behaviour in this
emerging electronic environment through an
empirical invesigation of user preferences.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Virtual Reality Dynamics
Social Networking has been the precursor of VWs
(Messinger, Stroulia, Lyons, Bone, Niu, Smirnov,
and Perelgut, 2009). The first social networking
application has been SixDegrees.com that was
launched in 1997 (Boyd and Ellison, 2007).
Thereinafter, numerous other social web sites and
applications followed, such as Twitter, MSN,
YouTube and Facebook, adopting several Web 2.0
or 2.5 applications. No matter what their orientation
is, the social aspect has been the common
denominator.
These platforms are technology enabled to
facilitate various business activities and
opportunities. Virtual teams can work together in the
development of new products, attend virtual
meetings from their desk, test new products in a
manipulated environment under low risk, or be
trained to a new position. The flexibility of
collaboration coupled with the highly vivid
interfaces help them mimic real world activities.
2.2 User/Consumer Behaviour
The common interests of the members of a virtual
community form and shape that community (Porter,
2004). Similarly, in the virtual reality context, there
are VWs such as Second Life that induce users to be
part of activities and behaviour that are unusual or
do not exist in real life, and other that support
members to retain and increase real life behaviour
and social activities (Messinger et al. 2009).
According to Bellman, Lohse and Johnson
(1999, p.37), “the most important information for
predicting online shopping habits are measures of
past behaviour”. Along these lines, O’Keefe, Cole,
Chau, Massey, Montoya-Weiss and Perry (2000)
demonstrated that there are considerable differences
in the purpose of using the Internet between
different groups of subjects. In order to measure the
“Purpose of Internet Use”, they used four constructs;
social communication, E-Commerce, information
search and hobby. These constructs form the basis
for our empirical investigation in the present paper.
231
G. Krasonikolakis I., P. Vrechopoulos A. and Pouloudi A. (2010).
USERS’ PERSONALITY TRAITS IN THE CONTEXT OF VIRTUAL REALITY.
In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business, pages 231-234
DOI: 10.5220/0002950202310234
Copyright
c
 SciTePress

3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
AND METHODOLOGY
An exploratory quantitative research was considered
as the most appropriate approach to address the
aforementioned goals. To that end, an electronic
questionnaire was developed and served as the data
collection instrument of the study. Data were
collected through groups on Facebook that are funs
of VWs and from questionnaires distributed in
Second Life. 104 valid responses were collected.
(See Krasonikolakis, Vrechopoulos and Pouloudi
(2010) for further details on the research
methodology of the present research).
Employing the “Purpose of Internet Use” construct
discussed in section 2 (O’ Keefe et al. 2000), it was
first attempted to segment the sample according to
the construct that each subject classified to. The
sample was segmented into three groups.
Specifically, the first group, labelled “Social
Communication”, involves users that visit VWs to
satisfy their social needs only. The second group
labelled “E-Commerce” involves users that visit
VWs for e-commerce purposes regardless of any
other activities they are engaged in. Finally, the third
group involves the remaining users that visit VWs
for all purposes except e-commerce. The relevant
answers and corresponding segmentation of the
sample are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1: Segmentation of groups according to subjects’
answers.
Question: What do you usually do in a virtual world?
Group Answer
Group #1:
“Social Communication”
(only)
Meet friends
Meet new people
Group 2:
“E-Commerce”
(and other activities)
Shopping
Sell goods
Group #3:
“Hobbies” and/or
“Information Search”
and/or “Social
Communication”
Dancing (Hobby)
Play games (Hobby)
Build things (i.e. home furniture,
car etc) (Hobby)
Information search
Education (Information Search)
Other
4 ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
4.1 Demographics
The gender dimension of the participants was split
roughly evenly (53,8% being male), while most of
the respondents were under 35 years old (81,8%).
Table 2: Demographic characteristics of the sample.
Demographics N=104 (%)
Age
<18 2,9
18-25 40,4
26-35 38,5
36-50 16,3
>50 1,9
Gender
Male 53,8
Female 46,2
Education
High School 19,2
Undergraduate 26,9
Graduate 31,8
Postgraduate 13,5
PhD 7,7
Nationality
Greek 87,5
European 10,6
Australian 1
American 1
Average income
in Euros
0-700 17,3
701-1100 21,2
1101-1500 27
1501-3000 16,3
>3000 1
N/A 17,3
At least 65,5% of the population have an average
income up to 1500 Euros whereas the majority of the
respondents were Greek (87,4%).
4.2 Internet Behaviour
The first step for mapping user behaviour has been
to record the frequency that each group visited the
internet (Table 3). About 46,7% of the respondents
that belong in the “Social Communication” group
use the internet many times or at least once per day.
The corresponding percentage is much greater
(82,5%) for “E-Commerce” users (i.e. group #2) and
about the same (41,2%) for the third group.
Table 3: Frequency of using the internet.
Frequency(%) Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
Many times
per day
20 30 26,5
At least every
day
26,7 52,5 14,7
Sometimes
per week
20 12,5 23,5
At least once
a week
23,3 5 23,5
Sometimes
per month
10 0 11,8
It is probable that someone buys or sells products
over the internet but not in a VW and vice versa.
The results (Table 4) indicate, however, that a
predictable 97,5% of “E-Commerce” users buy
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products over the internet. A significant amount
(53,3%) of group #1 users buy products over the
internet while they are not engaged in shopping
activities in VWs. Finally, the same applies to the
subjects of the third group (58,9% of them buy
products through the Internet).
Table 4: Consuming aspect (buying products through the
internet).
Consuming
aspect (%)
Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
Yes 53,3 97,5 58,9
No 46,7 2,5 41,1
The frequency of buying products over the
internet is summarized in Table 5. Approximately
half of the users (50,1%) that visit VWs only for
communication purposes, buy products over the
internet at least once or twice a month.
Table 5: Frequency of buying products over the internet
(responses as a percentage of consumers of the respective
groups).
Frequency (%) Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
Almost every week 18,8 20,5 15
Once or twice a month
(approximately)
31,3 41 25
Once or twice in six
months
(approximately)
37,5 25,6 30
Once or twice a year
(approximately)
12,5 7,7 20
Once or twice in the
past
0 5,1 10
The corresponding proportion for “E-
Commerce” users is greater (61,5%) and for the
third group is 40%.
Table 6: Kind of products bought over the internet
(responses as a percentage of consumers of the respective
groups).
Kind of
products(%)
Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
Only
tangible
25 38,5 40
Only
intangible
6,3 10,3 15
Both
tangible and
intangible
68,8 51,3
45
Finally (Table 6), regarding the nature of
products that users buy, the proportions are lower in
intangible products in all groups. Indicatively, only
6,3% of “Social Communication” users buy only
intangible products and the percentages for the other
groups are 10,3% and 15%, respectively.
4.3 User Behaviour in Virtual Worlds
According to the results presented in Table 7, 83,3%
of the “Social Communication” users (group 1) visit
VWs at least once a week. The corresponding
percentage is greater (92,5%) for “E-Commerce”
users and for the third group (76,5%).
Table 7: Frequency of visiting virtual worlds.
Frequency(%)
Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
Never 0 0 5,9
Every day 30 47,5 26,5
Every two days 13,3 37,5 23,5
Once a week 40 7,5 26,5
Once a month 10 7,5 14,7
Once a year 6,7 0 2,9
The following Table (Table 8) highlights the
social aspect of VWs. It is noteworthy that the
percentage of users of group #1 (13,3%) and #3
(5,9%) that do not visit other social web sites is
greater than that of “E-Commerce” users (2,5%).
Table 8: Visit of other social web sites and applications
such as Facebook, MSN, MySpace, etc.
Visit of other
social Web
sites(%)
Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
Yes 86,7 97,5 94,1
No 13,3 2,5 5,9
As part of our study of VW user profiles, we also
investigated how the users first learned about the
existence of VWs (Table 9). For the first group,
most of the users (86,8%) learned about VWs from
friends (offline and online) and through e-mails. The
same applies to 75% of the respondents of the
second group and 70,6% of the third group. It is
notable that only 5,9% of the respondents of the
third group were informed through scientific articles
and journals, while 20% of “E-Commerce” users,
randomly.
Table 9: Learning about VWs.
Frequency(%) Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
friends offline 33,4 20 23,5
friends online 26,7 42,5 32,4
advertisements 3,3 2,5 5,9
e-mail 26,7 12,5 14,7
scientific articles
or journals
0 2,5 5,9
randomly 10 20 17,7
USERS' PERSONALITY TRAITS IN THE CONTEXT OF VIRTUAL REALITY
233

The majority of users, especially those of the first
two groups seem to embrace the idea that VWs are
becoming an emerging alternative retail channel.
Nevertheless, approximately one in four (26,5%) of
the users of the third group do not (Table 10).
Table 10: Consideration of VWs as an emerging
alternative retail channel.
Emerging
alternative
retail
channel(%)
Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
Yes 86,7 92,5 73,5
No 13,3 7,5 26,5
Looking further into the perception of VWs as an
e-business outlet, we investigated what types of
stores or business users visit in VWs. As users had
the ability of choosing more than one option, Table
11 depicts the percentages of users that chose only
one option and the percentage of users that chose
more than one option (combination). The findings
show that 33,3%, 15% and 20,1% of the users within
each group respectively (i.e. for groups 1,2 and 3),
visit apparel stores only. However, the frequency
that the second “E-Commerce” users group visit a
combination of the stores, is greater (77,5% ) to that
of the first “Social Communication” users group.
Table 11: Types of stores/business visited in a VW.
Types of
stores/
businesses (%)
Group #1 Group #2 Group #3
Apparel 33,3 15 20,1
Hotels 10 0 11,8
Furniture
(Home
equipment)
6,7 0 2,9
Consulting
services for
consumers
6,7 5 5,9
Grocery 0 0 0
Non-profit
organisations
3,4 2,5 8,8
Combination
of the above
39,9 77,5 50,5
5 CONCLUSIONS
An important finding of the present study is the great
amount of users that conduct e-commerce
transactions in the “traditional” Web but do not buy
products over the internet in the context of VWs.
While this merits further exploration, we posit that it
can probably be explained either because users treat
VWs as an entertaining or gaming oriented
environment and not as a retailing channel, or
because they are considered light users of VWs and
are reluctant to commit to transactions in an
environment that is deemed unstable.
The origins of VWs in social computing (cf.
Messinger et al. 2009; Chittaro and Ranon, 2002)
has also been confirmed in the present study: a great
percentage (28.8%) of the sample visit VWs only to
meet friends or meet new people (social aspect).
This was also confirmed by the finding that a great
amount of users of all groups (i.e. 86,7%, 97,5%,
and 94.1%, respectively) also visit other social
networks (i.e. YouTube, Facebook, MSN etc).
Therefore, it is important to take this consideration
into account when investigating user/consumer
behaviour in V-Commerce.
In conclusion, the present study contributes to
our understanding of the purpose of VWs use by
empirically examining the user behavioural and
demographic patterns in the virtual reality context. It
demonstrates that both the social aspect and past
experience play a significant role in users’ “virtual”
decisions and behavioural habits.
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