数字世界的自我化身理论建构

Theory Building of Self-Avatar in the Digital World

数字科技已经深刻地改变了人类的生产和生活,为经济和社会的发展提供新动能。自我化身是新一代互联网的基本要素,是数字世界的底层架构,目前对自我化身还缺乏本质性和整体性的理论研究。提炼自我化身的本质属性,探究其对人类行为的影响。在Web of Science和谷歌学术等电子数据库中检索期刊的实证论文,归纳出共识性结论,作为构建理论的科学依据。在商业、教育、健康和游戏等重要行业的数字应用场景中,提取出典型性案例,作为形成理论的实践基础。根据学术文献和应用实践中显现的证据三角形,演绎出自我化身理论框架。研究结果表明,自我化身是由用户控制的、具有拟人化形象、能够在数字世界中实现化身–环境、化身–化身互动的用户个体的数字化代表。作为自我化身的设计准则,形象相似性和行为相似性会提升化身认同,形成相似性效应。当用户处于探索期时,形象相似性的效应更强;当用户处于适应期时,行为相似性的效应更强。自我化身认同进一步影响数字世界的沉浸体验和现实世界的模仿行为,并受到不同应用情景的调节,形成扩散效应。形象相似性更适合功能性场景,行为相似性更适合情感性场景。但对于社交性场景来说,当形象相似性与行为相似性匹配时,个体将获得更高的社交价值。因此,未来研究可以用多种方法检验命题,探讨新兴的数字世界中自我化身的新型消费行为,以及用户如何使用自我化身参与创意者经济。自我化身的科学定义和设计图谱为数字技术和产业界的化身实践提供了化身设计的理论指引,自我化身的整合性理论框架有助于产业界根据不同场景因势利导地发挥化身的正面作用,营造健康良性的数字空间和引导个体的亲社会行为。

Digital technology has profoundly changed human being′s activities in producing and living, and provided new driving force for economic and social developments. As the underlying architecture of the digital world, self-avatars are the infrastructure of the new generation of Internet. However, there is a lack of essential and holistic theoretical insights into self-avatar.To refine the essential attributes of self-avatar and explore its influence on human behavior, and combing the academic literatures from Web of Science and Google Scholar electronic databases, we summarized the consensual findings that are used as the scientific evidence for theoretical construction. In the digital application scenes including business, education, health,gaming and other important industries, we selected the typical cases that become the practical basis of theoretical formation.Rooting in evidence triangulation emerging from academic literatures and practical cases, we deduced the integrated theoretical framework of self-avatar.The research results show that self-avatars are digital representatives of user individuals who are controlled by themselves,which have anthropomorphic appearance, and achieve avatar-environment, as well as avatar-avatar interaction in the digital world. As the design rules of self-avatar, form similarity and behavior similarity will enhance individual′s self-avatar identification, forming the similarity effect. When the user is in the exploratory stage, the form similarity is more effective on self-avatar identification than behavioral similarity. When users are in the adaptation stage, the effect of behavioral similarity on selfavatar identification is stronger than form similarity. Self-avatar identification further influences immersion experience in the digital world and imitation behavior in the real world, and is regulated by different application scenarios to form a carryover effect. Facing the functional scenes, form similarity provides more functional values for users than behavior similarity. Behavior similarity is more suitable for emotional scenes. However, for social situations, when form similarity matched with behavior similarity, individuals will acquire higher social value and have more immersion experience and imitative behaviors. Therefore,future researchers can use a variety of methods to test the above propositions, and explore the new consumption behavior of self-avatars in the emerging metaverse. We also illustrate that how users use self-avatars to participate in the creator economy.The scientific definition and design rules of self-avatar provide theoretical guidance for digital technology and industrial practice of avatar design. The integrated theoretical framework of self-avatar helps enterprises to take advantages of the avatar according to different value-oriented situations context. Policymakers leverage the avatar′s effect to build a healthy and benign digital space and guide the prosocial behavior of individuals.