Vili Lehdonvirta
Researcher
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology

I am a researcher at Helsinki Institute for Information Technology Network society research program, which is concerned with the economic, social and legal impact of information technologies. My own research focuses on so-called virtual consumerism — the phenomenon where people spend significant sums of real money on virtual goods, such as game items. My main research questions are what motivates this behaviour and to what extent can it substitute physical forms of consumption in the future. To this end, I am a doctoral student of economic sociology at Turku School of Economics.