Impact of Social Ripple Effect and Virtual Wellness Programme on Sustainability of Self-development Amongst Middle-Aged Individuals

Abstract

Social Ripple Effect (SRE) refers to the chain reaction that results from an individual change to embark large-scale social impact. The phenomenon suggest an implication on how we can co-create social environments that could catalyze societal level change. Howsoever, SRE phenomenon’s research findings in virtual medium is relatively unexplored. Hence this paper aim to study the impact of SRE and virtual wellness programme on sustainability of self-development among middle-aged individuals. Comprehensive qualitative methods of thematic analysis and Ripple Effect Mapping were used on the collected verbatim responses and naturalistic observational remarks of heterogenous random sample (n=80). 4 social determinant variables were taken in to account ; i.e., Sense of community, Social support, Intra-participant ripple and Ripple effect on personal networks. Results resonated with studied social factors and SRE was found to have significant effect on sustainability of self-development in context of virtual wellness programme. Study also suggested social determinants that assisted in catalyzing the preliminary individual change helped to capitulate social hindrances caused due to the program’s virtual nature. In consideration with the imposed Covid-19 social distancing protocols, this study’s proposed framework for optimized virtual social functioning can be found as a fruitful proposition to carry on similar virtual programms effectively.