One of the many mysteries about online dating is why people choose to communicate with one person over another. What is it about Jane that makes her receive 10 emails a week from interested men while Janet receives 3 a month? While much of this has to do with the way a person’s profile is written and his or her interests and ideas, online daters also rely quite a bit on demographic and social factors when making the decision whether or not to email a member or respond to a received email. For this reason, the research article “What Makes You Click: An Empirical Analysis of Online Dating”, by Günter J. Hitsch and Ali Hortaçsu of the University of Chicago and Dan Ariely of MIT, is worth examining.

“What Makes You Click: An Empirical Analysis of Online Dating” looks at what sort of demographic attributes (physical features, income, education, etc.) contribute to a better or worse chance of receiving an introductory email from a potential match or positive response to their own introductory email. The researchers examined “socioeconomic and demographic information and a detailed account of the website activities of more than 23,000 users of a major online dating service. 11,390 users were located in the Boston area, and 11,691 users were located in San Diego.” They observed the online dating members’ activities for three and a half months in 2003. The results of this research are very interesting and could potentially give online daters a better understanding of their own odds in the online dating scene.

What Do Online Daters Want?
Before getting into the results, it is important to understand the relationship interests of those people using the online dating used for the study. According to the research data, 39% of people in the research pool had stated on their profile that they were hoping to start a long-term relationship, 26% were “just looking/curious”, while 9% stated that they were specifically looking for a casual relationship. Men overall were more interested in the casual relationship option (14%) than women (4%).

Based on research, the majority of online daters that participate in active emailing and interaction are interested in a serious long-term relationship as opposed to casual hooking up. The researchers suggest that if you take into account that “just looking” may be chosen over long-term relationship options because it sound less committal, more than 75% of all active users are interested in a long-term partner. Also keep in mind that the researchers found those using online dating sites to be typically single, somewhat younger, more educated, and receiving a higher income than the general population.

Knowing that the majority of those exchanging emails over online dating services are interested in forming a long-term relationship, here are some surprising, and perhaps not so surprising, factors that go into which types of people members choose to contact. Remember, this is only examining what goes into an initial contact; assuming that the people are honest in their profiles, this may lead to interactions in person and possibly marriage, but this research project only examined the reasons behind why online daters initially decide to contact another person or respond to a first contact.

For more report click here

Popularity: 15% [?]

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Stumble it!

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Share This  |  Email It  |  Print This Post  |  Subscribe to It!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Better Life, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.