What Makes You Click: An Empirical Analysis of Online Dating∗

This paper uses a novel data set obtained from a major online dating service to draw inferences on mate preferences and the match outcomes of the site users. The data set contains detailed information on user attributes such as income, education, physique, and attractiveness, as well as information on the users’ religion, political inclination, etc. The data set also contains a detailed record of all online activities of the users. In particular, we know whether a site member approaches a potential mate and receives a reply, and we have some limited information on the content of the exchanged e-mails. A drawback of the data set is that we do not observe any “offline” activities. We first compare the reported demographic characteristics of the site users to the characteristics of the population-at-large. We then discuss the conditions under which the user’s observed behavior reveals their mate preferences. We estimate these preferences and relate them to own and partner attributes. Finally, we predict the equilibrium structure of matches based on the preference estimates and a simple matching protocol, and compare the resulting sorting along attributes such as income and education to observed online matches and actual marriages in the U.S. ∗We thank Babur De los Santos, Chris Olivola, and Tim Miller for their excellent research assistance. Seminar participants at the Choice Symposium in Estes Park, Northwestern University, the 2004 QME Conference, the University of Chicago, and the Stanford GSB provided valuable comments. This research was supported by the Kilts Center of Marketing (Hitsch) and a John M. Olin Junior Faculty Fellowship (Hortaçsu). Please address all correspondence to Hitsch ([email protected]), Hortaçsu ([email protected]), or Ariely ([email protected]).