The Online Dating Matching Market
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-economists-would-fix-online-dating-1454907660
Online dating sites are a common space where people with similar interests get paired up to potentially form a true connection. Beyond the algorithms that make this possible, online dating sites are a good example of matching markets.
In an online market, there is a ‘thick’ market, in other words, the market is full with a lot of people looking to be matched. There is also a lot of congestion in online dating and dating apps. For example, the ability for you to match with and message an infinite number of people on Tinder creates a lot of build up. Economist Alvin Roth claims that one solution to this problem would be to introduce ‘signaling,’ where players in a market can be required to send pricey messages about themselves and their goals, into dating apps. Evidently, several dating sites, such as Tinder and Hinge, have introduced some type of signaling into their programming.
In addition to site congestion, stereotypes are an issue when it comes to online dating. Because internet dating is fairly impersonal, it is easy to make snap judgements about a person that are not necessarily true. Sites like Bumble were created to attempt to work around common female stereotypes.
Economist Paul Oyer also suggests that sometimes the solution to finding a romantic partner is just to settle based on weighing the costs against the benefits. After a while of searching an encountering people with whom you just don’t click, people tend to get frustrated. This frustration typically results in women lowering their standards significantly because they’d rather find someone than be alone.
From all of these issues that the economists presented about online dating, it appears as if online dating apps and websites are not always perfect matching markets. For instance, if people are stereotyping, there may be some perfectly viable person who isn’t matched with anyone or nearly anyone simply because people are making snap judgements.
Also, there are likely to be various constricted sets in an online dating matching market. For example, if there were a set of 5 males(A, B, C, D, E) and 5 females (J, K, L, M, N) a bipartite graph of the market could look like this:
In the case above, females L, M, N are only matched with males D and E. Possibly because of their partner prerequisites or possibly because of the ‘congestion’ phenomenon discussed in the article, it would not be possible to create a perfect matching set here.
Overall, there are some flaws to online dating, some because of the programs themselves and some because of the people using them. There will likely never be a day where there is a perfectly matched online dating site because of these issues, which is unfair to many users.