The impact of metaverse on global business dynamics: a 36-year bibliometric review and future research direction

Abstract In an era of rapidly evolving digital landscapes, business activity within virtual worlds—particularly the metaverse—has become increasingly important for innovation, stakeholder engagement, and global economic growth. This study employs a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to examine growth trends, leading authors, influential publications, emerging themes, and keyword patterns in research on virtual worlds and business, using documents retrieved from the Scopus database. To ensure analytical robustness, the study combines multiple bibliometric tools, including R (Bibliometrix/Biblioshiny), VOSviewer, and Publish or Perish. The findings reveal several important patterns. First, annual publication output shows a clear upward trajectory, with a marked acceleration after 2021, likely driven by technological advances and heightened digital engagement during and after the COVID-19 period. Second, the geographical distribution of publications highlights the USA, China, India, and the UK as major contributors, while institutions such as the University of Macau emerge as influential research hubs. Third, analysis of highly cited publications identifies foundational themes related to social media, virtual environments, immersion, and the evolving business potential of the metaverse. Finally, keyword co-occurrence and clustering analyses reveal distinct thematic areas that reflect diverse strategic applications of virtual worlds across business domains. This study contributes a long-term intellectual map of metaverse-related business research and provides insights for scholars, managers, and policymakers seeking to understand the evolution and strategic implications of virtual worlds in the digital economy. Practical implications, limitations, and directions for future research are also discussed.