Toward inclusive and sustainable digital growth: linking e-commerce, social capital, and community development

Abstract

The growth of e-commerce has reshaped how people participate in the economy, interact online, and develop their communities in both developed and emerging economies. However, studies on the social and developmental impacts of digital commerce remain fragmented across disciplines, regions, and conceptual traditions. This study examines two interconnected research streams: e-commerce and social capital, and e-commerce and community development, by synthesizing bibliometric data on global scholarship from 2001 to 2025. The data were collected from Scopus and Web of Science, yielding 546 publications. To explore the conceptual organization and thematic evolution of the field, multiple bibliometric methods, including keyword co-occurrence analysis, thematic mapping, citation analysis, temporal trend analysis, and multiple correspondence analysis, were used. The results indicate that e-commerce is no longer seen as a tool for transactions but as a sociotechnical ecosystem of digitally mediated participation, trust, economic empowerment, and community change. The literature on e-commerce and social capital is primarily organized around themes of online trust, digital interaction, and social participation in e-commerce. In contrast, the literature on e-commerce and community development is organized by themes of sustainability, entrepreneurship, digital inclusion, and local economic resilience. The study also finds significant geographical variation in existing research on digital commerce in China, with less work on digitally marginalized areas and underserved communities, particularly in rural digital transformation and platform-based entrepreneurship. The study further demonstrates that e-commerce has the potential to boost bridging social capital by creating digital networks and external markets, but also to transform localized forms of bonding social capital that are traditionally associated with face-to-face interaction and community cohesion. The study contributes by integrating fragmented scholarship into a multidimensional sociotechnical framework linking e-commerce, social capital, digital inclusion, sustainability, and policy support. It has implications for inclusive digital growth and sustainability-oriented community development, particularly regarding equitable participation, resilient local economies, and sustainable consumption practices.