Cyberloafing Research 1997-2019: A Citation-based Literature Review

Background and purpose: The purpose of this study is to illustrate the evolution of cyberloafing research and identify the important papers in the development of cyberloafing knowledge. Methodology: We identify a total of 116 research papers from the Web of Science (WOS) database that were published in top journals during 1997-2019. We performed citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and main path analysis to identify the most influential authors, countries, and institutions in the development of cyberloafing research, and graphically map the relationships between them. Results: Cyberloafing research has progressed through three stages which we coin the emergent stage, the exploration stage, and the burgeoning stage. We also identify the relationships between articles and identify the distinct and significant knowledge streams, 16 influential papers that are seminal or highly sighted, and we identify the authors, institutions, and countries from which the research emerged. Researchers in the United States have produced the most research, followed by China, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The National University of Singapore produced the most research in our sample, and Vivian K. Lim of the National University of Singapore was the most influential author, anchored by her seminal piece on cyberloafing and organizational justice published in 2002. Conclusion: This study is, to our best knowledge, the first to examine the development of cyberloafing research using evidence-based analysis methods. It depicts the development of the cyberloafing literature and identifies significant streams that researchers can explore in the future. We conclude that future research should incorporate more direct measures of cyberloafing, examine individual consequences caused by too much cyberloafing, such as mental health.