So, Who Likes You? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Management Science, Forthcoming

67 Pages Posted: 29 Sep 2022

See all articles by Ravi Bapna

Ravi Bapna

University of Minnesota - Minneapolis

Edward McFowland III

Harvard University - Business School (HBS)

Probal Mojumder

Indian Institute of Management Udaipur

Jui Ramaprasad

University of Maryland

Akhmed Umyarov

University of Minnesota - Minneapolis

Date Written: September 21, 2022

Abstract

With one-third of marriages in the United States beginning online, online dating platforms have become important curators of the modern social fabric. Prior work on online dating has elicited two critical frictions in the heterosexual dating market: women, governed by age-old social norms of not making the first move, are inhibited in their interactions, in that they do not initiate contact with men. On the other side, men send an abundance of messages, the majority of which do not convert to matches. A key distinguishing feature of online dating versus its traditional counterpart is the ability to leave a range of digital signals not replicable in the offline world. These digital signals can impact the nature of online dating platform outcomes. In this paper, we study the impact of a feature that reveals ‘who likes you’ (WLY) on engagement, number of matches, match efficiency, and match sorting in online dating. This feature reveals the identity of the voters who have rated the focal user with a like. To causally identify the effect of this feature we conduct a large-scale randomized control trial in collaboration with a major North American dating platform. The treatment causes women to be more proactive, sending 7.4% more messages, which is a highly desirable market improvement given that men send double the number of messages as compared to women. Further, we find that the women endowed with this feature increase their matches by 14.4%, while men increase their matches by 11.5%. Analyzing the moderating impact of desirability—a key aspect of the WLY feature—provides us with nuanced findings. Depending on the levels of each of the two parties’ desirability, we see evidence of sorting, encouragement, and discouragement.

Keywords: online dating, IT-enabled features, identity revelation, digital signals, randomized trial, field experiment, matching markets, desirability

Suggested Citation

Bapna, Ravi and McFowland III, Edward and Mojumder, Probal and Ramaprasad, Jui and Umyarov, Akhmed, So, Who Likes You? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment (September 21, 2022). Management Science, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4225484

Ravi Bapna

University of Minnesota - Minneapolis ( email )

321 19th Ave S
Information and Decision Sciences
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

Edward McFowland III

Harvard University - Business School (HBS) ( email )

Boston, MA 02163
United States

Probal Mojumder (Contact Author)

Indian Institute of Management Udaipur ( email )

Balicha
Udaipur, Rajasthan 313001
India
+91 0294 2477 258 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://https://probalm86.github.io/

Jui Ramaprasad

University of Maryland ( email )

Robert H. Smith School of Business
4313 Van Munching Hall
College Park, MD 20815
United States

Akhmed Umyarov

University of Minnesota - Minneapolis ( email )

321 19th Ave S
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

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