Social engagement and user immersion in a socially based virtual world

• We assess social engagement and spatial exploration in a virtual environment.
• We examine predictors of user reported immersion in a virtual environment.
• Social engagement is positively associated with user reported immersion.
• Spatial exploration is negatively associated with user reported immersion.
• Highly controllable virtual environments should include a social component.

Research into online social virtual worlds demonstrates their utility as a methodological tool for studying social behaviors and traits. Less is known about what aspects of the virtual world lead users to experience a sense of immersion (i.e., a psychological state characterized by perceiving oneself to be enveloped by a virtual environment; Witmer & Singer, 1998). The current study extends previous research by assessing the importance of social engagement with other avatars as a key component of immersion in virtual worlds. Participants navigated a virtual “hotel” in Second Life, an online social virtual world. We assessed participants’ social engagement with other avatars and the amount participants explored the virtual space e.g., spatial exploration. Positive associations between social engagement and immersion, and negative associations between spatial exploration and immersion, suggest that the users’ social experience outweighed the users’ spatial experience in creating a sense of immersion in this virtual world. This was despite the fact that the social experience was ultimately less realistic than the visual one. This finding, along with previous literature, suggests that the social nature of virtual worlds is a key component of user’s sense of immersion in the virtual environment.