Factors Influencing Knowledge Sharing in Immersive Virtual Worlds: an Empirical Study With a Second Life Group

Immersive virtual worlds such as Second Life have recently gained much attention from education and business because of its adaptability to address real world challenges such as: on-line presentations, meetings, collaboration, 3D data visualization and on-line knowledge sharing. It is also possible to use immersive virtual worlds for the purpose of facilitating knowledge sharing in Virtual communities of practice (VCoP). Varieties of such communities exist in Second Life and help their members to achieve their goals. There is however not enough research into knowledge sharing in immersive virtual worlds. Therefore the purpose of this research is to fill this gap in knowledge. The conceptual model proposed by Usoro and Majewski (2008) will be applied to knowledge sharing in immersive virtual world environment. It will be investigated what factors are the most influential while residents of immersive virtual worlds share their knowledge. As a first attempt to validate the research model, quantitative and qualitative research was carried out with participants of Second Life group.