Elizabeth E. Bruch and M. E. J. Newman
Sociological Science, April 2, 2019
10.15195/v6.a9
Abstract
We study the structure of heterosexual dating markets in the United States through an analysis of the interactions of several million users of a large online dating website, applying recently developed network analysis methods to the pattern of messages exchanged among users. Our analysis shows that the strongest driver of romantic interaction at the national level is simple geographic proximity, but at the local level, other demographic factors come into play. We find that dating markets in each city are partitioned into submarkets along lines of age and ethnicity. Sex ratio varies widely between submarkets, with younger submarkets having more men and fewer women than older ones. There is also a noticeable tendency for minorities, especially women, to be younger than the average in older submarkets, and our analysis reveals how this kind of racial stratification arises through the messaging decisions of both men and women. Our study illustrates how network techniques applied to online interactions can reveal the aggregate effects of individual behavior on social structure.
We study the structure of heterosexual dating markets in the United States through an analysis of the interactions of several million users of a large online dating website, applying recently developed network analysis methods to the pattern of messages exchanged among users. Our analysis shows that the strongest driver of romantic interaction at the national level is simple geographic proximity, but at the local level, other demographic factors come into play. We find that dating markets in each city are partitioned into submarkets along lines of age and ethnicity. Sex ratio varies widely between submarkets, with younger submarkets having more men and fewer women than older ones. There is also a noticeable tendency for minorities, especially women, to be younger than the average in older submarkets, and our analysis reveals how this kind of racial stratification arises through the messaging decisions of both men and women. Our study illustrates how network techniques applied to online interactions can reveal the aggregate effects of individual behavior on social structure.
 | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. |
- Citation: Bruch, Elizabeth E., and M. E. J. Newman. 2019. “Structure of Online Dating Markets in U.S. Cities.” Sociological Science 6: 219-234.
- Received: February 13, 2019
- Accepted: February 28, 2019
- Editors: Jesper Sørensen, Olav Sorenson
- DOI: 10.15195/v6.a9
“The data used as the starting point for our study come from one of the largest free dating sites in the United States and were collected in July 2014.”
It seems the study is quite old and done using an online dating site offering a search engine, not a compatibility matching method based on personality like eHarmony and copycats.
Regards, Fernando Ardenghi
What is your point regarding the scientific merit of this article? You raised an issue but with no elaboration as to how that issue matters. You must know how difficult it is to gain access to the data from any of dating site or app. This is pioneering work.
There are several problems within this article which reflect the deep problems, the hypostasis, of online dating. The main assumption in this article is that assortation promotes open dating, it does not. Assortation is a constraint on dating; dating up or down on demographic variables like socio-economic class, age differences, racial and religious factors, and sexual orientations is constrained. In fact, these factors are often not even given causing deep ambiguity on member profiles.