Dating market and matching market
Dating and matching are always associated with each other, and I found an article on this topic. The article discusses that
- the way people date is changing to online,
- an economist’s perspective to interpret people’s relationships in the dating market. Specifically, a transaction happens when the buyer’s supply and seller’s demand match at a specific price in a regular market. In the dating market, people use qualities to “sell” them, and they are likely to partner when qualities match.
- how online dating as the trend benefits the dating market. As the trend of online dating increases the volume of such a dating market, the author believes that it benefits people by creating more matches.
Point 1 makes sense to me because the rapid development of technology is moving everything online. Point 2 provides an interesting way to understand how people choose each other, and it also reminds me of the concept of matching the market (discussed below). Utilizing a matching market to represent a hypothetical dating market, I think point 3 is not always true. Here is how I created it:
Background/ assumption: There is a website for heterosexual dating. Only males post their information, and only females browse this website and choose which males to talk to based on that information. A male does not know which female he would talk to until the female talks to them.
Definition of different components in the graph: In the graph, I put males on the left side (i.e., nodes marked as 1, 2, 3…) and females on the right side (i.e., nodes marked as A, B, C…). The edge between females and males does not mean that they have determined a romantic relationship. Instead, we create an edge if this female chooses this male among all other males on the website to start a deeper conversation to know him more. To illustrate point 2, the valuation is each female’s rating to each male according to their quality compatibility.
A perfect matching in the dating market:
Though perfect matching is not really possible in reality, here, it is how it could be hypothetically. Suppose we have three males on this dating website and three females browsing this website. Assume that the valuations of females for each male are below:
In this case, there is a perfect matching. When each female chooses the male they rate the highest, female A gets connected to male 1, female B connected to male 2, and female C connected to male 3. A perfect matching means that each female has a male to further their relationship, and so does each male.
However, a “thicker” dating market could destroy this perfect matching:
The word “thick” means higher “transaction volume” in this article. When the volume of the market increases, it may break the original perfect matching situation. Specifically, let’s say we add two males and two females in this market/ graph, and we connect females to the male who is her top choice. Thus, we connect female D to male 4, and female E to male 5. However, because of the existence of male 4, female C changes her valuations so that her top choice now becomes male 4 instead of male 3. Therefore, in this case, {female C, female D} become a constricted set because N({female C, female D}) = {male 4}, and the graph does not have a perfect matching.
Why this happens:
As shown in the graph in this article, now the online platform is the trend how couples meet, and more and more people will likely do so in the future. As the volume of the dating market keeps increasing, people’s valuation for each other is likely to change (which is understandable for sure when you have much more options to choose from). Thus, even if initially it was not perfect matching, the edges coming out of each female would constantly change – you thought you wished to further your relationship with a male. Then you found another male on the website, so you changed your previous valuation and shifted to talk to the new one.
“Less is more”:
The male just lost a female to talk to whom he could have if the dating market volume hadn’t increased. Another article with an opinion opposite the one above gives another perspective/a potential solution to analyze this loss of perfect matching. The key phrases in this article are “face swiping fatigue” and “less is more” in the dating market. When people have fewer choices, a perfect matching might be achieved (i.e., back to the original graph). In contrast, when people have more options, more matches will happen, but it becomes more difficult to have a perfect match.
However, we don’t have to pursue a perfect matching:
Considering the two readings above, a question came up – which is better, perfect matching with unlimited options or an unstable market with a greater number of matches? It turns out that the perfect matching cannot accurately reflect reality. Back to the nature of the dating market and my definition of matching here – a female is connected to a male if she values this male the most and chooses that male to know him more. In reality, 1. Having a perfect matching does not mean a successful matching because males’ evaluation also matters, which was not covered in my example. The reason for which was mentioned in the assumption, that “Males do not know which female he would talk to until the female talks to them.” 2. People on the dating website seldom talk to only one person, and thus in the second situation. Though male 3 does not have anyone he connected to, someone considering him as the second-best person might still talk to him in reality.
Conclusion:
But about the impact of a higher volume, though it does increase the chance you meet your right person, psychologically you might not feel satisfied because there always seems to be a better one. Therefore, what is a better way? To me, I am in the third-person point of view, looking at the graph, and trying to find a perfect solution for everyone; but in reality, we are all individuals who are just a tiny part of this graph. What is “better” is subjective to everyone, and such an emotional question might not be explained this logically.