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WHEN HARRY SWIPED RIGHT FOR SALLY: THE ECONOMICS OF ONLINE DATING By Rosie Mahoney, Industrial Economics (2019)
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t is a truth universally acknowledged that any single university student in possession of a smartphone must have, at some point, downloaded Tinder…or at least considered doing so. Online dating and dating apps such as Tinder have addressed a certain disequilibrium in the world of finding love. When in search of “the one”, there are no perfect substitutes due to the diverse nature of human beings. Therefore, in a perfect world we would have the ability to meet and date every single person of a desirable sex and age, to find our ideal match. Clearly, doing so would be very costly, so online dating and various other dating apps have filled a void, allowing you to efficiently scan online profiles and filter your potential partners. Yet, like any other economic tool, Tinder has drawbacks more complex than just running out of Superlikes. As in any other market, online dating has characteristics that define the way in which it operates. The first being its barriers to entry. If you have opposable thumbs and access to a smartphone, you can actively use Tinder, so in this market the barriers to entry are pretty much non-existent. What impact does this have on your likelihood of finding love? In addition to the low barriers to entry in the Tinder dating market, studies have revealed that users of dating apps have a ratio of roughly 60% men to 40% women, with men also being twice as active, creating an even more lopsided ratio (Globalwebindex.com, 2018). This inevitably means guys are trying harder to gain females’ attention- i.e. you swipe right and send out as many Joey Tribbiani “How you doin’?” gifs as you can.
... studies have revealed that users of dating apps have a ratio of roughly 60% men to 40% women, with men also being twice as active, ...
But here in lies the problem, it costs you nothing to do this as the barriers to using the app are non-existent; you are not correctly signalling your interest. Swiping right and shooting off a quick message costs nothing in terms of time or emotional investment. Yet, much like slot machines, the potential for a hottie to reply to your message keeps you coming back for more. In behavioural economics this is called variable ratio reinforcement, where your continual usage of various dating apps is reinforced after an unpredictable number of responses (Weinschenk, 2013). This schedule creates a steady, high rate of responding, and a continual stream of swiping right and unimaginative messages, inundating girls with low quality matches. This may even lead to some girls giving up hopes of finding “the one” and deleting their profiles altogether, further worsening the problem of poor matches.
This is why a guy who is over 6ft will always mention their height, yet boys under 6ft never do.
This problem is exaggerated by the presence of another market characteristic, imperfect information. You lads know that girls are flooded with messages, so you may go the extra mile with your profile to attract their attention, you try to signal your value to your potential date. This is why a guy who is over 6ft will always mention their height, yet boys under 6ft never do. It also explains why if you own a puppy, you will not miss the chance to post multiple photos of you cuddling it to make this known. Yet, as Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof explains, signalling may not be enough to overcome this information gap, the presence of too many “lemons” (people who look nothing like their profile picture) that are unable to be filtered out of the market may also lead to the decay of the market to the point of nonexistence (Akerlof, 1970). And again, Tinder profiles will be deleted after one disappointing date too many. If you do manage to navigate your way past the fake profiles and questionable bios, you have now reached yet another stage where it can all go wrong: messaging. Here, game theory can be used to explain why they seem to be 7
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