Matching and Sorting in Online Dating

Abstract

This paper studies the economics of match formation using a novel dataset obtained from a major online dating service. Online dating takes place in a new market environment that has become a common means to find a date or a marriage partner. According to comScore (2006), 17 percent of all North American and 18 percent of all European Internet users visited an online personals site in July 2006. In the United States, 37 percent of all single Internet users looking for a partner have visited a dating Web site (Mary Madden and Amanda Lenhart 2006). The Web site we study provides detailed information on the users' attributes and interactions, which we use to estimate a rich model of mate preferences. Based on the preference estimates, we then examine whether an economic matching model can explain the observed online matching patterns, and we evaluate the efficiency of the matches obtained on the Web site. Finally, we explore whether the estimated preferences and a matching model are helpful in understanding sorting patterns observed "offline," among dating and married couples.Two distinct literatures motivate this study. The first is the market design literature, which focuses on designing and evaluating the performance of market institutions. A significant branch of this literature is devoted to matching markets (Alvin E. Roth and Marilda A. O. Sotomayor 1990), with the goal of understanding the allocation mechanism in a particular market, and assessing whether an alternative mechanism with better theoretical properties (typically in terms

Interethnic dating preferences of Roma and non-Roma secondary school students

“…Therefore, controlling for these would mean that I try to measure the net exclusion in dating controlled for other types of exclusions, which are present, which was not the purpose of this research. In this respect, the present measurement is similar to ones used in revealed preference studies (Hitsch, Hortaçsu, & Ariely 2010, Fisman et al 2008, where one can infer preferences from choices, however, not all attributes of the actors (which are possibly correlated to race or ethnicity) are known, therefore the race or ethnicity coefficient actually includes their effects too.…”

“…from the list of all members of the class, as it is known from previous studies that physical attractiveness is a very strong predictor of dating preferences for males and females (Hitsch, Hortaçsu, & Ariely 2010, Fisman et al 2008. Frequency distributions of attraction and dating willingness differed notably.…”

The internet as a data source for advancement in social sciences

“…Whether it is about matching city passengers to taxis, long distance travellers to airplane seats, 4 individuals in the marriage market (Hitsch et al, 2010) or in the job market ) the Internet has reduced search frictions and hence opened new business opportunities, where business like Online Dating Services or Job Board Services flourish. Naturally, this creates a new data source for understanding matching in the various contexts of economic behavior and to use it to investigate old questions.…”

Finding a Partner in the Virtual Environment: Motives and Psychosocial Characteristics of Online Dating Site Users in Croatia

“…Dubinski intervjui koje su putem interneta provele Couch i Liamputtong (2007) pokazuju da korisnici tih servisa aktivno primjenjuju niz strategija za uočavanje rizika koji mogu proizići iz tih interakcija i da pokazuju autonomiju u upravljanju tim rizicima. Druga istraživanja također upućuju na to da većina njih učestalo upoznaje svoje kibernetske partnere uživo, da su veze koje se potom uspostavljaju u »stvarnom životu« uglavnom utemeljene na realnim očekivanjima (Houran i Lange, 2004) te podjednako trajne i kvalitetne kao veze započete na neki od uobičajeni-jih načina (Hardie i Buzwell, 2006;Gunter, 2008;Stoddard, 2008;Hitsch, Hortaçsu i Ariely, 2010). Iskustva onih koji koriste tradicionalne metode upoznavanja partnera često su kudikamo gora u pogledu pogrešne procjene osobnosti i izloženosti nasilju (Feng, 2005).…”

“…Štulhofer i dr., 2006). Izvan opsega ove studije ostale su i neke važne teme poput iskustava s prvih susreta korisnika u »stvarnom svijetu« (Houran i Lange, 2004), sklonosti rizičnom seksualnom ponašanju i uznemiravanju/nasilju (Štulho-fer i dr., 2005), kvalitete dugotrajnijih intimnih veza započetih posredstvom internetskih servisa (Gunter, 2008;Hitsch, Hortaçsu i Ariely, 2010), ali i potencijala tih servisa za razaranje postojećih intimnih veza (Orr, 2004;Hardie i Buzwell, 2006). Dakako, probabilistička i nacionalno-reprezentativna istraživanja nužna su za konstrukciju svojevrsnoga referentnog okvira temeljnih sociodemografskih obilježja karakterističnih za korisnike servisa, koja se bez znatnih troškova mogu pridodati nacionalnim istraživanjima srodnih tema (npr.…”