Paper Information
| Title | Who Spends Money on Virtual Items |
| Presenter(s) | D. Yvette Wohn and Eun-Kyung Na |
| Session | Communities & social gaming |
| Time | Friday, October 22, 10:30a-11:30a |
| Location | Parlor A |
| Format | Paper Presentation |
| Description | In this paper, we look at how social interaction in a virtual world is associated with spending of real money to buy virtual goods, based on log data from a social gaming service for children. Time spent on the game, length of membership, and number of virtual items owned by the player were all positively associated with spending of real money. Reciprocal factors, such as giving and receiving virtual gifts, were positive indicators of spending of real money. Number of friends, however, had no significant effect on money-spending. Also, players who owned more free items provided by the game system spent were inclined to spend less money. Comparing spenders with non-spenders, spenders had significantly more friends and spent more time on the SNS. |
| More | View PDF of extended abstract |