TY - JOUR AB - Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of user personality and vlaues on the number of connections users make, the number of requests for connections that users give out, and the number of connections invitations users receive.Design/methodology/approach This is a field study of 179 participants interacting in a novel virtual world. The world’s server logs are used to capture sociometrics about the users and their interaction.Findings Findings suggest that personality and values influence the number of friends users make and the number of friendship requests users give out, but not the number of friendship invitations users receive. Only one personality trait – conscientiousness – exhibits homophily.Originality/value Perosnality and social value orientation have rarely been studied together in information systems (IS) research, despite research showing the two have an impact on IS relevant constructs. The use of server logs for data capture is novel. Avatar friendship is an under-researched concept in IS. VL - 29 IS - 4 SN - 0959-3845 DO - 10.1108/ITP-10-2014-0242 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-10-2014-0242 AU - Chesney Thomas AU - Chuah Swee-Hoon AU - Hoffmann Robert AU - Hui Wendy AU - Larner Jeremy PY - 2016 Y1 - 2016/01/01 TI - How user personality and social value orientation influence avatar-mediated friendship T2 - Information Technology & People PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 688 EP - 716 Y2 - 2024/03/28 ER -