Latest updates
Bringing digital work to developing countries: guest post published in the World Bank’s Private Sector Development blog
“From millions of tasks to thousands of jobs” - m2work, a mobile microwork idea competition I’m helping to organize, was launched today by infoDev (World Bank) and Nokia
My microblog
Introduction
I am a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, working in professor Harry Barkema's team at the Department of Management.
In my research, I examine the social and economic dimensions of new information technologies, especially online games, social networks and mobile phones. My particular area of expertise is the materialistic side of digital environments: virtual currencies, game items and virtual labour.
I have advised over a dozen companies and public organizations in Europe, United States and Japan, including Rovio Mobile (Angry Birds), CCP Games (EVE Online), Sulake (Habbo) and the World Bank.
I am an Adjunct Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Turku. I am currently on leave from a research position at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. I have previously held visiting positions at the University of Tokyo and Waseda University. Before my academic career, I worked as a game programmer.
See also
Virtual Economy Research Network - a collaborative project I founded in 2006
Tokion piiri - my Finnish-language blog about Japan, consumer culture and ubiquitous computing (finished in 2008)
LinkedIn profile - my work history
My research
Below is a selection of my papers, presentations and videos organized into four thematical areas. A full list of publications is available here.
- Virtual goods and currencies
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Lehdonvirta, V. (2009) Virtual Item Sales as a
Revenue Model: Identifying Attributes that Drive Purchase Decisions. Electronic Commerce Research, vol. 9, no. 1,
pp. 97-113. 
presentation slides - Lehdonvirta, V., Wilska, T.-A. & Johnson, M. (2009) Virtual Consumerism: Case Habbo Hotel. Information,
Communication & Society, vol. 12, no. 7, pp. 1059-1079.
- Lehdonvirta, V. (2009) Virtual Consumption. Publications of the Turku School of Economics, A-11:2009.
- Lehdonvirta, V. (2005) Virtual Economics: Applying Economics to the Study of Game Worlds. Proceedings of the 2005 Conference on Future Play (Future Play 2005), Lansing, Michigan, October 13-15.
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- Digital work and payments
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Lehdonvirta, V. and Ernkvist, M. (2011) Knowledge Map of the Virtual Economy. Washington DC: World Bank. presentation slides
- Lehdonvirta, V., Soma, H., Ito, H., et al. (2009) UbiPay: Minimizing Transaction
Costs with Smart Mobile Payments. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Mobile Technology, Application &
Systems (Mobility 2009), Nice, France, September 2-4. New York: ACM.
demonstration video - Liu, Y., Lehdonvirta, V., Kleppe, M., et al. (2010) A Crowdsourcing Based Mobile Image Translation and Knowledge Sharing
Service. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2010),
Limassol, Cyprus, December 1-3. presentation slides
- Lehdonvirta, V. (2010) Getting paid to party: what is the difference between work and play? Microtask blog.
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- Persuasive technology and gamification
- Nakajima, T., Lehdonvirta, V. (2012) Designing Motivation Using Persuasive Ambient Mirrors. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (forthcoming). demonstration video
demonstration video - Hamari, J. & Lehdonvirta, V. (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.
- Yamabe, T., Lehdonvirta, V., Ito, H., et al. (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.
- Lehdonvirta, V. & Virtanen, P. (2010) A New Frontier in Digital Content Policy: Case Studies in
the Regulation of Virtual Goods and Artificial Scarcity. Policy & Internet, vol. 2, no. 3, art. 2.
- Lehdonvirta, V. & Räsänen, P. (2011) How do young people identify with online and offline peer groups? A comparison between UK, Spain and Japan. Journal of Youth Studies, vol. 14, no. 1., pp. 91-108.
- Lehdonvirta, V. (2008) The Virtual Tax Question. Virtual Economy Research Network.
- Lehdonvirta, V. (2004) European Union Data
Protection Directive: Adequacy of Data Protection in Singapore. Singapore Journal of Legal Studies, vol. [2004],
no. [Dec], pp. 511-546.
See my full list of publications