Zeineb Ayachi and Rim Jallouli. Virtual Communities and Wellbeing: A systematic Literature Review and Recommendations for Future Research. (ICDEc 2021)

1. VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AND WELLBEING:
A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW AND
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
ZEINEB AYACHI AND RIM JALLOULI
ICDEC JULY 15-17, 2021

2. LAYOUT 1/2
• Introduction
• Definition of concepts
 Virtual communities
 Wellbeing
 Research gap
• Methodology
• Results and Discussion
 Descriptive Analysis

3. LAYOUT 2/2
 Related Research Fields and methodologies
 Platform Types, Support Tools and Wellbeing
 Conclusion and Recommendations for Future Research

4. INTRODUCTION 1/2
• Web 2.0 allows users to keep and build social connections through social media platforms
• Social media users’ accounts have been increasing exponentially
• people keep track of each other anywhere in the world.

5. INTRODUCTION 2/2
• This work will focus on previous research studying virtual communities and their relationship with
people’s wellbeing.
 1. the state of the art on virtual communities in relationship to wellbeing,
 2. the related concepts of wellbeing that have mostly attracted the attention in virtual communities
and wellbeing research;
 3. the related research fields and the methodologies used;
 4. the themes and issues of virtual communities and wellbeing emerging from the literature.
 5. the types of platforms and support tools studied in relation with wellbeing and its related
concepts.

6. DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS 1/3
• Virtual communities:
 When compared to conventional social networks, virtual communities provide
individuals seeking common social and supportive characteristics with access to a larger
network of people
have become a second reality
Five types of virtual communities have been synthesized byMata and Qasada (2014)

7. DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS 2/3
Table 1: Types of virtual communities [Mata&Qesada, 2014: 62)
Name Purpose Examples
Commercial communities To enable commercial transactions and other businesses. Amazon, e-Bay
Users are buyers, sellers, brokers, etc.
They are focused on a commercial area and are usually associated
to e-commerce
Information communities To facilitate the exchange of information on topics of interest Wikipedia
Users contribute information or knowledge
Communities of practice To share opinions, experiences, or ideas Twitter
Virtual reality communities To experience imaginary environments Second life
Social communities To establish or maintain social or professional relationships Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace

8. DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS 3/3
• Wellbeing
 “the condition of being comfortable, healthy and happy”
 used interchangeably with quality of life: “an individual’s satisfaction with his or her life
dimensions in comparison with his or her ideal life” (Dalia & Ruzevicius 2007)
 Importance of data on wellbeing:
 can be used by economists to check economic indicators (Kahneman & Krueger, 2006)
 as a way of tracking social progress and guiding public policies (Dolan & Metcalfe, 2012)

9. RESEARCH GAP
• This work aims to provide a comprehensive review that integrates and synthesizes findings on the
current state of research on virtual communities and wellbeing.
• It examines any relationship between virtual communities with one or more of the wellbeing’
concepts including health, comfort, happiness, and quality of life.

10. METHODOLOGY 1/2
• Keywords Based Search
 articles dealing with virtual communities and wellbeing from January 2015 up to January 2021
 Google Scholar, Emerald insight, and ScienceDirect databases
 filters like review articles, research articles, and book chapters
 Words and similar words
 Virtual communities: “online communities”, “global village”, and “netizens”.
 Wellbeing: “happiness”, “health, “comfort”, and “quality of life”
 523 papers
 floating reading: reading titles, keywords and abstracts of the retained papers and checking if there is a relationship
between virtual communities and wellbeing.

11. METHODOLOGY 2/2
• Content Analysis
 1) read the data in terms of titles, keywords, abstracts of the retained papers,
 2) define the units and categories of analysis,
 3) develop coding rules,
 4) code the data according to the rules, and
 5) analyze the results and draw conclusions.

12. RESULTS 1/7
• Descriptive Analysis
 Out of 523 papers, 29 met inclusion criteria
 Elsevier: 19 papers, Emerald: 9 papers, and Cornell University:1 paper.
 Paper publication indicates a remarkable increase in 2020
 The year 2020 witnessed the outbreak of Covid-19 which had disastrous effects worldwide

13. RESULTS 2/7

14. RESULTS 3/7
• Dominance of the positive trend of wellbeing
 Wellbeing+: 19 papers,
 Happiness+: 3 papers,
 Health+: 10 papers,
 Comfort+ 2,
 Quality of life+5
 Wellbeing – and comfort 2 papers.

15. RESULTS 4/7
• Overlap of wellbeing and its related concepts in the same papers.
 the same paper often alludes to wellbeing and one or two of its related dimensions at the same time
 complementarity between wellbeing dimensions relating wellbeing with one or more dimensions
 interdisciplinary nature of the papers: computer science/technology, social science, and healthcare

16. RESULTS 5/7
• Related Research Fields and Methodologies
Related research fields
 Healthcare (11 papers):
 Increased wellbeing (9/10 studies) thanks to support of the digitalized healthcare system like online programs, enabling virtual reality technologies for the elderly,
and/or social support by peers
 Comfort- (1 study) due to overwhelming number of webinars for GI physicians
 Computer science/technology (9 papers)
 Improved wellbeing thanks to online games and social media, data security
 Social research (6)
 Wellbeing+ thanks to interdependence and network convergence, social support, knowledge, and financial support
 Marketing and management (3 papers).
 learning benefits from involvement within different online communities of practice, online shopping, relational boycott

17. RESULTS 6/7
• Table 2: Cross table: Number of Articles per Methodology and Research Field
Method Research Field Total
Computer science / Healthcare Social science research Marketing / Management
technology
Quantitative 4 2 2 1 9
Qualitative 2 1 2 0 5
Mixed 1 3 2 1 7
Review 2 2 3 1 8
Total 9 8 9 3 29

18. RESULTS 7/7
Platform Types, Support Tools and Wellbeing
Table3: Platform, Support Tool and Frequency
Platform Support Tool Frequency
Professional platforms Informational support 10
Virtual reality Apps, devices, and digitalization of skills 6
Online games 5
Social platforms Peer social support 8

19. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
FUTURE RESEARCH
• The collected papers (29) relevant to virtual community and wellbeing from January 2015 to
January 2021, despite the relative short period, show that this field is still in its infancy.
• The sudden growth of publications in 2020 (11) potentially indicates a growing interest in exploring
virtual communities and wellbeing due to the new situation imposed by Covid-19 and related needs.
• Findings on the relationship between virtual communities and wellbeing revealed:
 a rather positive link: with a very few exceptions, the trend indicated better wellbeing, and more
particularly, better health, comfort, happiness, and quality of life as a result of interacting in virtual
communities
 the most important dimensions of wellbeing explored were positive wellbeing and positive health

20. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
FUTURE RESEARCH
• Methodology:
 the quantitative method was mostly used (9 papers)
 the review method (8 papers),
 the mixed method (7papers), and
 the qualitative method with only 5 papers
 The main research fields: healthcare, computer science/technology, social science, and marketing
and management.

21. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
FUTURE RESEARCH
• Interdisciplinarity was revealed in the omnipresence of computer science/technology in all the research
fields.
• Omnipresence of digital tools: games, digitalized healthcare systems, enabling virtual reality technologies,
knowledge management systems, semantic interpretation, digitalized skills overlapped in the four
disciplines
• Three main types of platforms:
 Professional platforms for informational support, social networking sites, including forums and websites,
 Non-professional social platforms for peer social support, and
 virtual reality platforms for apps, devices, and online games

22. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
FUTURE RESEARCH
• Future studies could extend the current research by using:
 more databases and filters, and
 examining leading authors and countries
to provide a complementary report of research in the field of virtual communities and wellbeing.