Avatar e-mail versus traditional e-mail: Perceptual difference and media selection difference

The study investigates how knowledge workers perceive avatar e-mail differently from traditional e-mail, and how they select traditional versus avatar e-mail when different levels of task equivocality and different types of communication direction are present. Three field studies were conducted with knowledge workers who have used avatar and traditional e-mail. This study demonstrates that overall perception toward avatar e-mail is significantly different from traditional e-mail with respect to media richness and social presence characteristics. In addition, this study found individuals used different e-mail selection approaches when conducting tasks with different equivocality (high versus low equivocal tasks) and tasks for different communication direction (lateral versus upward). Avatar e-mail users also sent lengthier messages than traditional e-mail users when conducting a highly equivocal task. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.