Leisure Time in Second Life: Cultural Differences and Similarities

Abstract

This paper analyses leisure activities in Cyber worlds such as Virtual Communities (VCs) in the Internet, and how people through their avatars explore this new worlds in search of fun. It makes a cross cultural study between three different cultures represented within a VC in the Internet. The three chosen cultures are Latin American, American and British, and the VC is Second Life (SL). Te main objective is to assess if and how the cultural background of the people behind avatars influence leisure time spent in these communities, proposes a methodology using 3D avatars as researchers, and draws some conclusions about the subject.