vili lehdonvirta
PhD (Econ. Soc), MSc (Tech)
Visiting Scholar, University of Tokyo
Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology

contact
Email: vili.lehdonvirta@hiit.fi
Phone (Japan): +81 90 7818 4470
Address (Japan): Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo,
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 [map]
Phone (Finland): +358 50 384 1530
Visiting address (Finland): Helsinki Institute for Information Technology,
Spektri Business Park, Pilotti, Metsänneidonkuja 4, Espoo, Finland [map]
Mailing address (Finland): PO Box 19800, FIN-00076 Aalto
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about
I am a researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology's
Network society research program, which is concerned with
the economic, social and legal impact of information technologies. Since 2004, I have been carrying out
research on so-called virtual goods, currencies and economies. I wrote a PhD thesis about virtual consumption
— the phenomenon where people spend significant sums of real money on virtual goods, such as game items.
I examined what motivates this behaviour and to what extent could it substitute material consumption in the future.
My other interests include persuasive technology, ubiquitous computing, intellectual
property rights in the digital environment and data protection law.
I am a member of Electronic Frontier Finland.
Before joining HIIT, I used to make
games.
I am currently a Visiting Scholar at the Interfaculty Initiative for
Information Studies, University of Tokyo.
As of July 2008, I am a member of the Advisory Board for Live Gamer, Inc.
see also
Virtual Economy Research
Network Blog, bibliography, forum and mailing list for scholars, students and developers interested in virtual
goods, currencies and economies.
Vili Lehdonvirta's LinkedIn
profile
My past positions
Tokion piiri
My Finnish-language blog about Japan, consumer studies and ubiquitous society (currently not maintained)
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selected publications
Full list of publications here.
Vili Lehdonvirta & Pekka Räsänen (2010) How do
young people identify with online and offline peer groups? A comparison between UK, Spain and Japan. Journal of Youth
Studies (forthcoming).
Vili Lehdonvirta, Terhi-Anna Wilska & Mikael Johnson (2009) Virtual
Consumerism: Case Habbo Hotel. Information, Communication &
Society, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 1059-1079.
Vili Lehdonvirta (2009) Virtual Item Sales as a
Revenue Model: Identifying Attributes that Drive Purchase Decisions. Electronic Commerce Research, vol. 9, no. 1,
pp. 97-113.
Vili Lehdonvirta (2009) Virtual Consumption [Doctoral
thesis]. Publications of the Turku School of Economics (A-11:2009), Turku.
Vili Lehdonvirta (2010) Online spaces have material
culture: goodbye to digital post-materialism and hello to virtual consumption. Media, Culture & Society, vol. 32, no. 6 (forthcoming).
Tetsuo Yamabe, Vili Lehdonvirta, Hitoshi Ito, Hayuru Soma, Hiroaki Kimura, Tatsuo Nakajima (2009) Applying Pervasive Technologies
to Create Economic Incentives that Alter Consumer Behavior. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on
Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2009), Orlando, Florida, September 30-October 3. New York: ACM, pp. 175-184.
Juho Hamari & Vili Lehdonvirta (2010) Game
Design as Marketing: How Game Mechanics Create Demand for Virtual Goods. Int.
Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 14-29.
Vili Lehdonvirta, Hayuru Soma, Hitoshi Ito, Tetsuo Yamabe, Hiroaki Kimura & Tatsuo Nakajima (2009) UbiPay: Minimizing Transaction
Costs with Smart Mobile Payments. Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Technology, Applications, and
Systems (Mobility 2009), Nice, France, September 2-4. New York: ACM (forthcoming).
Miyuki Shiraishi, Yasuyuki Washio, Chihiro Takayama, Vili Lehdonvirta, Hiroaki Kimura, and Tatsuo Nakajima (2009) Using individual, social and economic persuasion techniques to reduce CO2
emissions in a family setting. In: S.
Chatterjee and P. Dev (eds), Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Persuasive
2009), Claremont, California, April 26-29. New York: ACM, pp. 130-138.
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