Abstract:
The interest in online gaming and metaverse is increasing. Both digital technologies share the aspect of representing oneself via an avatar in online environments. To understand how individuals interact through avatars, we use the lens of existing identity theories and observe different levels at play when individuals identify with their avatars. We argue that these different layers have fundamentally different characteristics and play different roles in the identification and implications. Our preliminary findings show indications for different identity layers, on which we plan to conduct a qualitative study. We aim to provide more detail on new concepts, such as avatar-avatar identification, to better understand which layers are most salient and may influence identification.