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Previous empirical studies have identified several factors that seem to play a role in determining purchase intent in virtual worlds; threedimensional online environments in which users interact while represented by their avatars. So far however, a clear overview of these factors is lacking, and the question that remains is what factors affect purchase intent most. Therefore, this study aims to create an overview of factors that influence users' purchase intent in virtual worlds, and to subsequently identify the most influential factors. To conduct this review, relevant literature was gathered using a variety of search engines and keywords. An article had to explicitly study factors influencing purchase intent in virtual worlds in order to be included in this review. This search method resulted in a selection of twelve relevant articles that were used for further analysis. Results show that perceived enjoyment, social influence, customization and ease of use are important factors that influence purchase intent in virtual worlds. Enjoyment of the virtual world, beliefs and attitudes of others, avatar customization, and easy-to-use virtual world applications can thus increase users' willingness to purchase products in the virtual world. Practical implications as well as limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed. © 2017 the author(s). Published by informa uk limited, trading as taylor & francis group.this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution-nonCommercial-noDerivatives license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

This study employed a scenario-based approach whereby participants were asked to choose which communication channel they prefer in certain situations. The first aim was to determine the effect of the topic of interactions and social ties on channel choice. The second aim was to examine the underlying mechanisms (controllability, anonymity, co-presence, and affective understanding) in the relation between interaction topic and social ties and channel choice. A questionnaire was administered among 238 participants, who were presented five communication scenarios with topics of low and high intimacy and four social ties, ranging from weak to strong. Results revealed that preference for face-to-face (FtF) communication was highest, followed by audio-only computer-mediated communication (CMC) and text-based CMC. Preference for FtF communication was higher when people valued feeling co-present and decreased when people valued feeling anonymous. Our results showed that communication channel choice is strategic and the choice for FtF ommunication, audio-only and text-based CMC largely depends on controllability, anonymity and co-presence.

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Early adolescents frequently use mobile messaging apps to communicate with peers. The popularity of such messaging apps has a critical drawback because it increases conformity to cyber aggression. Cyber aggression includes aggressive peer behaviors such as nasty comments, nonconsensual image sharing, and social exclusion, to which adolescents subsequently conform. Recent empirical research points to peer group norms and reduced accountability as two essential determinants of conformity to cyber aggression. Therefore, the current study aimed to counteract these two determinants in a 2 (peer group norms counteracted: yes, no) x 2 (reduced accountability counteracted: yes, no) design. We created four intervention conditions that addressed adolescents’ deficits in information, motivation, and behavioral skills. Depending on the condition (peer group norms, reduced accountability, combination, or control), we first informed participants about the influence of the relevant determinant (e.g., peer group norms). Subsequently, participants performed a self-persuasion task and formulated implementation-intentions to increase their motivation and behavioral skills not to conform to cyber aggression. Effectiveness was tested with a messaging app paradigm and self-report among a sample of 377 adolescents (Mage = 12.99, SDage = 0.84; 53.6% boys). Factorial ANCOVAs revealed that none of the intervention conditions reduced conformity to cyber aggression. Moreover, individual differences in susceptibility to peer pressure or inhibitory control among adolescents did not moderate the expected relations. Therefore, there is no evidence that our intervention effectively reduces conformity to cyber aggression. The findings from this first intervention effort point to the complex relationship between theory and practice. Our findings warrant future research to develop potential intervention tools that could effectively reduce conformity to cyber aggression.