"Feeling that I was Collaborating with Them:" A 20-year Scoping Review of Social Virtual Reality Leveraging Collaboration CSCW017

Fig. 1. Overview of the scoping review findings on Social Virtual Reality (VR) collaboration. The figure illustrates the three main themes: (1) Individual Perception and Experience of Collaboration in Social VR, examining sense of presence and avatar perception; (2) Team Dynamics and Collaboration in Virtual Environments, focusing on social presence, collaboration realness, trust-building, and engagement; and (3) Enabling Collaboration through Social VR Affordances, addressing virtual environment functionality, virtual objects and tool facilitation, and Supporting Presence through spatial audio and movement.

As more people meet, interact, and socialize online, Social Virtual Reality (VR) emerges as a technology that bridges the gap between traditional face-to-face and online communication. Unlike traditional screen-based applications, Social VR provides immersive, spatial, and three-dimensional social interactions, making it a potential tool for enhancing remote collaborations. Despite the growing interest in Social VR, research on its role in collaboration remains fragmented, calling for a synthesis to identify research gaps and future directions. We conducted a 20-year scoping review, screening 2,035 articles and identifying 62 articles that addressed how Social VR has supported collaboration. Our analysis shows three key levels of support: Social VR can enhance individual perceptions and experiences within their groups, foster team dynamics with virtual elements that enable realistic interactions, and employ the unique affordances of VR to augment users' spaces. We discuss