Política de Impulso Económico (Industria, 3i+d y Comercio)

Questions measuring social presence were based on two criteria: the feeling of being in a shared space with another person (co-presence) “Social presence refers to the feeling of being socially present with another person at a remote location” (Sallnas, Rassmus- grohn, & Sjostrom, 2000, p. 462) and the extent to which communication and social interaction in the virtual world seem similar to a face-to-face interaction (social presence).

The use of indicators that ask the respondent to assess the ‘experience’ rather than the ‘medium’ is more typical of presence measures. The equivalent approach for a presence measure would be to ask, “How realistic is this medium? as opposed to, “How realistic was the experience?” When it comes to measuring subjective social presence (i.e. the awareness of the presence of others) one can use a similar set of attributes as for personal presence. The following measurement items are based on the work of Nowak and Biocca (2003), and Slater, Sadagic, Usoh, and Schroeder (2000).

measurement items (CP3, CP7, CP10, CP11): [During the experiment….]

• CP3: Please rate how closely your sense of being together with other people in

a real world-shopping settings resembles your sense of being with them in the experimental social-environment, you just experienced?

• CP7: To what extent did you have a sense of your shopping-partner being with

you in the online shop?

• CP10: To what extent was this like a face-to-face conversation with a real

person?

• CP11: To what extent can you imagine yourself being with your shopping-

partner in the similar virtual-social environment?

The term ‘co-presence’ was originated by Goffman (1963) and was defined as: a sense of being together in a virtual environment where individuals become “accessible, available, and subject to one another” (p. 22), namely, co-presence consisted of two dimensions: “having a sense of feeling of other individuals, namely perceiving others and having a sense of feeling that others were actively perceiving us and being part of a group” (Bulu, 2012, p. 155).

Ciolek (1982) states that “full conditions of co-presence, however, are found in less variable circumstances: persons must sense that they are close enough to be perceived in whatever they are doing, including their experiencing of others, and close enough to be perceived in this sensing of being perceived” (Ciolek, 1982; Biocca & Nowak, 1999; Biocca & Nowak, 2001; Nowak, 2000). Researchers further conceptualised co-presence as a sense of being together and focused on more “psychological connection of minds” (Nowak, 2001) and “the sense of being together” (de Greef & IJsselsteijn, 2000; Cho & Proctor, 2001). The questions below generated from discussed definition of co-presence and transferred into:

measurement items (CP2, CP4): [During the experiment….]

• CP2: To what extent did you have a sense of “being together” in the online

shop? OR “being with your friends/relatives in the online shop?

• CP4: To what extent did you have a sense that you were perceived present by

your friends/relatives?

4.7.1.1.1 Sub scales of co-presence

Similar to social presence, co-presence has varying dimensions. The top three components of co-presence were identified as ‘colocation’, ‘sense of group/community’ and ‘apparent existence/feedback’. These constructs were used to develop measurement items to assess co-presence as a component of social presence.

I. Co-presence: Colocation

Colocation is a component of co-presence and it is defined as “the feeling that the people with whom one is collaborating are in same room” (Mason, 1994).

measurement items (CP5, CP6, CP7): [During the experiment….]

• CP5: To what extent did you have a sense of ‘being there’ in the online shop,

you just experienced? (Casanueva & Blake, 2001)

• CP6: To what extent did you have a sense that you were in the same place as

your friends/relatives? OR CP7: To what extend did you have a sense that your shopping partners were in the same place as you? (Casanueva & Blake, 2001)

II. Co-presence: Sense of Group/Community

“…Namely, co-presence consisted of two dimensions: having a sense of feeling of other individuals, and being part of a group” (Bulu, 2012, p. 155). Co-presence is distinguished from social presence in that while social presence relates to the quality of the medium and users’ perception of the medium, “co-presence addresses more psychological interaction of the individuals” (Bulu, 2012, p. 155).

measurement items (CP8, CP9): [During the experiment….]

• CP8: To what extent did you have a sense of the emergence of a

group/community? (Casanueva & Blake, 2001)

• CP9: To what extent did you have a sense of being ‘part of the group’? (Casanueva & Blake, 2001)

III. Co-presence: Apparent existence, feedback

Co-presence is also defined by Heeter (1992) as “the extent to which other beings in the world appear to exist and react to the user” (p. 263). Gunawardena (1995) defined co- presence as “the degree to which a person is perceived as a ‘real person’ in mediated communication”. McLeod et al. (1997) defined it as “the degree of tangibility and proximity of other people that one perceives in a communication situation” (McLeod, Baron, Marti, & Yoon, 1997, p. 708).

Nowak (2001) argues that “if a person perceives that they have connected with another mind, they may also feel as if they were able to fulfil their communication goals” (p. 4). A medium that does not leave people with this sense of connection with or access to another mind may be less able to fulfil communication goals.

measurement items (CP12, CP13, CP14): [During the experiment….]

• CP12: To what extent did you feel you were able to assess your

friends/relatives’ reaction to what you said?

• CP13: How tangible did you feel your closeness was to your friend/relative? • CP14: To what extent were you able to communicate your needs to your